




































THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 


BY THE SAME AUTHOR 


THE STORY 

OF A NEW ZEALAND RIVER 

“The author not only knows her country, 
but those who live in it, and she describes 
both with strong feeling and yet with artistic 
restraint.” 

— Boston Transcript. 


THE 

PASSIONATE PURITAN 


BY 

JANE MANDER 

AUTHOR OF 

“THE STORY OF A NEW ZEALAND RIVER” 


NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY 
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD 
MCMXXI 



Copyright, 1921, 

By JOHN LANE COMPANY 


'H 


Press of 

J. J. Little & Ives Company 
New York, U. S. A. 


TO 

MY BROTHER 



THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 


The 

PASSIONATE PURITAN 


CHAPTER I 

It would not have mattered to Sidney Carey 
what kind of morning it was when she stepped 
out of the train at the Whakapara station for the 
first time. As it happened, it was blazing January 
heat, in the summer of 1912. But she hardly 
noticed it. 

When he handed down her travelling cases the 
train guard wondered again who she was, and 
why she had stopped there. He thought of her 
several times during the day, and when he reached 
home he did not wait for his wife to begin her 
usual inquisition as to who had gone up and down 
the line, but volunteered a description right away 
of the only first-class passenger he had had on 
the morning train. 

Sidney Carey was prepared to wait at the 
Whakapara station. Prepared because every- 
body she had ever heard of told picturesque tales 
9 


10 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

of waiting at wayside stations. Prepared also 
because the unusually explicit letter of instruc- 
tions she had received told her not to be disturbed 
if she had to. 

For a minute she stood still looking about her. 
After one glance at the dusty bench in the stuffy 
three-walled waiting room she decided to leave 
her luggage where the guard had dropped it, and 
to put up her umbrella, and walk up and down 
the platform. She saw the other passengers go 
towards a group of low wooden buildings on the 
other side of the clay road that ran parallel to 
the railway through the valley. She had no time 
to observe them individually because a stooping 
man, whose only insignia of office was a battered 
headgear like a yachting cap, came up to her. He 
carried a mail bag stamped Whakapara under 
one arm. 

“Miss Carey, miss?” he asked. 

“Yes, I am.” 

“Somebody’ll be down for you before long, 
miss. They know you’re coming.” 

“Oh, thank you. Do you know if my luggage 
has arrived?” 

“I guess so. There’s a lot of stuff gone up 
for you.” 

“Thank you.” 

The station master touched his hat with a rare 
respectfulness, and turning from her moved some 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN n 

cases into a small baggage room attached to the 
waiting room, locked the door, and with the mail 
bag under his arm followed the passengers across 
the road. 

Sidney walked after him to the end of the plat- 
form and looked curiously across at the building. 
She saw Whakapara Store and Post Office on a 
sign over the door where he disappeared. She 
saw the passengers and farmers and settlers 
gather to wait for the opening of the mail. In 
spite of the heat and the yellow dust that lay 
over everything she felt fresh enough to be 
curious about all she saw. She recognised one 
of the buildings as a blacksmith’s shop, another 
as an extension of the store. All, save the smithy, 
were set on low wooden blocks, with a sad assort- 
ment of tins and rubbish stowed away beneath 
them. 

A little apart from the central group stood the 
Town Hall. Sidney was to learn later what a 
Poohbah among buildings this absurd barn was — 
how it housed the activities of all denominations 
of ministers, of all brands of politicians, of the 
undertaker, the coroner, the wandering lecturer 
on character reading and “bumps”; of how it 
housed the annual agricultural show, the church 
soirees, the occasional bazaar, the intermittent 
movie, the ambitious wedding, the weekly dance, 
the anniversary ball — those hallmarks of western 


12 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

civilization that follow the British flag to the re- 
motest ends of earth. Sidney did not take in 
all this as she looked at it, nor did she foresee in 
what circumstances she might learn to have a 
great affection for it. It did not look like a place 
that offered a chance for thrills. 

Her eyes roved along the valley over the hills, 
partly wooded, burned and smoking in places, and 
all curiously desolate, even under the summer sun. 
Then she strolled to the other end of the platform 
and looked north. She could see the clay road 
and the railway running together for a quarter 
of a mile. She noticed that the train had stopped 
and was shunting empty trucks into sheds at the 
base of the hill on the right that rose like a cliff 
sheer up from the railway line into a mountain 
range. She remembered the station master’s “up” 
and “down.” And she knew without being told 
that somewhere up there was the Puhipuhi forest, 
lying like a land of dreams remote beneath the 
summer sun. 

Sidney gazed hopefully up at its uneven skyline. 
She knew adventure lay ahead of her up there, 
knew it as surely as a child does when it sets out 
to dodge imaginary lions in a shrubbery in the 
twilight. 

The train puffed on, and the sounds of its 
strenuous snorting died away. As Sidney was 
about to turn she heard a low rumbling up in the 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 13 

hills, a rumbling that swelled and stopped sud- 
denly. Then something caught her eye on the 
brow of the cliff above the railway line. To her 
amazement she saw a pile of timber shoot over 
the top and drop down to the empty trucks with 
a short roar that echoed round the valley. Since 
she could not see the machinery by which it was 
done it had the appearance of magic. As she 
watched, another load came over and dropped 
and reached the bottom safely. It filled her with 
excitement. She knew it was linked up with the 
timber mill in the bush whither she was going. 

Sidney Carey, at the age of twenty-four, ex- 
pected great things of herself and of the world. 
And in this belief she had been encouraged by 
most of the people she had met in her native 
city, Auckland. 

She had recently been arrested by a sentence 
by Arnold Bennett to the effect that whatever a 
person was was due merely to the accident of being 
born in the other bedroom, and because she had 
absorbed the profound truth in this remark even 
before she read it she was not as harmed by the 
success of her personality as she otherwise might 
have been. It was because she was born in a 
bedroom where the good fairies lavishly dealt out 
objective tendencies and gave but a minimum of 
Introspective ones that she had sailed through the 
world with her head up, her eager eyes and mind 


i 4 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

roving to learn of anything and everything but 
herself. 

Though not beautiful as a child, she grew more 
attractive every year. She was tall, slight and 
supple. Her hair was warm brown, touched in 
the sun with reddish lights, her colour clear and 
good, and her eyes blue and steady. 

At the age of fifteen she had passed her first 
teacher’s examination second on the list for the 
Auckland Province. For the three succeeding 
years she had headed the list. In the wider state 
examinations for her certificates she had gained 
first-class honours for every subject she took ex- 
cept algebra, thereby establishing a record that 
nobody in the whole of New Zealand had reached 
at that time. 

Being an inspired teacher, as well as a first- 
class student, she was naturally a favourite in 
educational circles, and naturally every head- 
master in Auckland wanted her for his head as- 
sistant. 

But some time before her dramatic triumphs 
the Auckland Board had ruled that every teacher 
applying for a big city position must have taught 
for two years somewhere in the backblocks. This 
was not only for the good of the teacher’s soul, 
but also for the good of the children of the 
remote farmer, the gumdigger and the bushman, 
who, the Board felt, ought to get some contact 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 15 

with the best it had to give them. After some 
wirepulling, and adverse criticism thereon, the 
Board had become rigid about enforcing the rule. 
Sidney Carey could not hope to escape it, even 
though she were a friend of the chairman, James 
Ridgefield. The most he could do, he said, would 
be to send her to the new school at his mill in the 
Puhipuhi where she would be within three hours 
of Whangarei, the largest town in the north, 
which was itself eight hours by steamer from 
Auckland. 

And Sidney, knowing she had to go somewhere, 
said this would do finely. Once she had adjusted 
her mind to the idea of the change, and it did 
not take her long, she was enchanted by the 
visions she conjured up of things she had known 
only in short vacations. She liked the idea of 
the little bush school she was to open and start 
upon its way. 

And she wanted something new. She had come 
to mental crossroads. She saw she had lived far 
too much in books. 

Sidney was not a typical teacher. She loathed 
the idea of ever becoming hallmarked. It was 
her secret pride that no one who met her socially 
took her for a teacher, or could guess her pro- 
fession. Out of school she never talked shop. 
She had already begun to project her mind into 
other fields. She wanted to write. And some 


1 6 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

success with newspaper articles had turned her 
thoughts to journalism. A discriminating news- 
paperman told her to get away from books, from 
teachers and theories, to talk less and feel more. 

“You’re not half developed, even for your 
age,” he told her. “Why, you’ve never been in 
love! And you really don’t know the country. 
You have lived far too much in rooms, and you’re 
surfeited with other people’s vibrations. By all 
means go to the Puhipuhi. The very thing you 
need.” 

Sidney knew he was right. And that was why 
she was glad to be on the Whakapara platform 
that summer morning, waiting for someone to 
meet her. 


CHAPTER II 


As Sidney continued to look at the siding, won- 
dering if a third load would drop from the hill- 
top, she saw a man appear beside the trucks walk- 
ing along the railway line towards the station. 
She wondered as he came on if he was to meet 
her. She saw that he was tall, that he held his 
head well up, and that he swung easily without 
stumbling along the uneven track between the 
lines. When he came to a high bridge crossing a 
dip not far from the station, he stepped from 
sleeper to sleeper without diminishing his speed. 

Not wishing to stare she retreated to sit down 
upon her baggage, and did not look again upon 
the stranger till he stepped upon the platform. 
Then as he came towards her she rose. 

Jack Ridgefield did not smile, for he rarely 
smiled. And meeting a strange woman meant 
nothing to him. But his grave courtesy was a 
force that radiated from him, powerful to attract 
almost every kind of person. It was one of the 
secrets of his enormous influence over the men 
in his father’s mill. He raised his hat some sec- 
onds before he spoke. 


17 


1 8 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

“Miss Carey?” 

“Yes, it is.” 

“I’m Jack Ridgefield.” 

Her face lit up as she held out her hand. She 
always met people with the air of finding them 
the most interesting thing she had encountered in 
a long while. Then she knew a good deal about 
Jack Ridgefield. She knew much more of what 
his father thought of him than he did himself. 

“I’m sorry you’ve had to wait,” he said. 

“I didn’t mind it a bit, thank you.” 

“I have to get the mail. I shall be back in a 
few minutes.” 

She had noticed that he carried a dirty canvas 
bag. She watched him go along the platform 
and cross the road to the store. She knew his old 
dusty tweed suit had once been the best of its 
kind, and that his soft cotton shirt and collar had 
been clean that morning. She had seen that his 
eyes were hazel and his hair neither dark nor 
light. That there was nothing vivid about him 
but his strength and the sense of confidence he 
inspired. 

In the store Jack met a sandy-haired country 
boy whose wagon was hitched outside. 

“Are you in a hurry, Jimmy?” he asked. 

“No, mister.” 

“Would you run some luggage along to the 
siding for me?” 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 19 

“You bet.” 

“Thanks, Jimmy. It’s there on the platform 
with a lady. Don’t take the lady.” 

Grinning, Jimmy ambled out. 

Sidney Carey looked at him inquiringly. 

“I’m to take your baggage, miss,” he said 
awkwardly. 

“Thank you,” she smiled. 

He was well along the road before she heard 
Jack Ridgefield’s steps again. She turned to meet 
him. 

“We shall have to walk to the siding,” he said, 
nodding his head at it. “I should have met you 
with a buggy, but we had a bad washout on the 
road up above two days ago, and it isn’t fixed 
yet.” 

“Oh, I don’t mind. I’m ready to do anything 
the country asks of me.” 

A suspicion of a smile crossed his eyes, enough 
to make her feel he thought her words a boast. 
Indeed, he looked at her tailormade citified ap- 
pearance and wrongly judged she had no idea 
what she was talking about. 

“I’ll take that,” he said, reaching for her um- 
brella. 

“I can carry it, thank you. You have that 
bag.” 

But he took the umbrella, as he took everything 


20 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

he intended to take, and they started together 
along the dusty yellow road. 

“Would you like it up?” he asked. 

“No, thanks. I like the sun.” 

She calculated, as she swung along beside him 
with a step as free as his, that he was only a year 
or two older than herself. She felt already that 
he was difficult, that he was the kind of man for 
whom most speech was meaningless. 

But Jack felt that as a host he must exert him- 
self. He began by asking her what kind of boat 
journey she had had to Whangarei, and they 
found no difficulty in asking and answering ques- 
tions till they reached the siding. 

There the boy in the wagon passed them. 

“Thanks, Jimmy,” Jack nodded at him. 

The boy grinned back, pleased to have served 
him. 

Sidney followed on between the rails of the 
siding. Men unloading flitches from the mill 
trucks to the railway ones looked at her curiously, 
touching their caps. Beside a shed she stopped 
and gasped. From her feet straight up into the 
sky ran a line of steel rails. Her bags were al- 
ready strapped to one of the two wooden trucks 
that seemed to hang at the bottom of a heavy 
steel rope. 

“You don’t have to ride up,” said Jack Ridge- 
field, “there’s a path.” 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 21 

She saw now the zigzag outline of it. 

“Does anybody ride?” she asked, remember- 
ing her boast. 

“We usually do. But I prefer not to take up 
people who don’t like the look of it.” 

There was nothing in his voice or manner to 
imply that he thought nervous people foolish. 

“I’ll ride up,” she plunged. 

She had hoped for a responsive look from him, 
but she was disappointed. It didn’t matter to him 
whether she was scared or not. But he carefully 
arranged his coat on the back truck for her to 
sit on, told her how to place her feet, for the 
trucks were not boarded right across, showed her 
the chain to hold on to, and then with another 
man jumped lightly onto the front truck and gave 
the signal to start. Someone at the shed blew a 
horn which was answered up the hillside, and they 
began to move. 

The whole way up Sidney kept her eyes fixed 
on Jack Ridgefield’s reassuring back, and held her 
breath. She would have been ashamed to admit 
her relief when they came to a standstill, and 
when a log was lowered as a buffer across the 
line behind them. 

Waiting for them at the top was a short sad- 
eyed man with a pair of magnificent draught 
horses. 

Sidney began to get up. 


22 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

“Oh, we go on,” said Jack, turning to look at 
her, “unless you’d rather walk. This line runs 
right into the mill. It’s three miles.” 

She knew that if she walked he would have to 
walk with her. She settled back. 

“Certainly, I’ll ride,” she answered, determined 
to enjoy the novelty. 

After the horses were hitched to the trucks in 
tandem fashion they began slowly to ascend a 
long slope of even steepness. Almost immediately 
they plunged into high bush, the trees often meet- 
ing overhead. Sidney began to be thrilled. Down 
one side she saw a good way into the depths of 
a ravine and heard water roaring out of sight at 
the bottom. On the other side she stared into 
tropical undergrowth that looked as if no man had 
ever worked his way through it. She knew it 
must have been a tough job to lay that railway 
there. She learned afterwards that Jack Ridge- 
field had engineered it and overseen its construc- 
tion as a boy of twenty. 

Sidney sat, as she had to, very still, sniffing the 
bush, delighting in the rattle of the trucks, in the 
click of the horses’ hoofs on the wooden sleepers, 
in the crack of the sad-eyed man’s whip as he 
walked beside them, his queer language of ex- 
hortation moderated considerably by her pres- 
ence. For a mile they proceeded ever upwards 
till they came suddenly out upon an open space 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 23 

where there stood a shed, a stable and a water 
trough. Two small trucks lay on a siding beside 
the line, and nearby there were piles of spare 
timber, large cans of black grease and a heap of 
sand. 

Here the trucks were braked to a standstill 
and the horses unhitched. The driver, Bill 
Hardy, slapped the hindquarters of the animals 
with an exclamation intelligible only to them, and, 
their harness clanking, they set off along a track 
that ran beside the line. 

Jack Ridgefield jumped off, the driver taking 
his place. The front truck then began to move, 
Sidney had not noticed why, and went off slowly 
at first, but gathering speed down the slope till it 
whizzed out of sight. 

Jack held out his hand to her. 

“Get off for a bit, Miss Carey, and stretch,” 
he said. “You must be stiff.” 

She found she was so stiff that for a minute she 
could not straighten herself. 

When she looked about her she was disap- 
pointed to find that haze and smoke veiled most of 
the country. She could see clearly only about half 
a mile down the line where the other truck had dis- 
appeared. She and Jack Ridgefield stood alone 
somewhere up in the air. She felt rather than 
saw that they were above everything for miles 
around. A gentle breeze, warm with passing over 


24 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

hot valleys, but sweet with the scent of burnt fern, 
refreshed her. 

“It’s a pity it’s so hazy,” he said, seeing she 
was enjoying it. “There’s a good view from here 
when it’s clear. If you’re rested we will go on.” 

He helped her back, let go the brake, gave the 
truck a starting shove, and jumped on. 

That first bush ride, shooting down slopes and 
along flats, was one of the most exciting things 
Sidney had known. She knew well there would 
be no accident with Jack Ridgefield at the brake. 
She magnified the difficulty of his job absurdly at 
the time, so that the ride carried with it not only 
the romance of racing through a veiled and un- 
known land, but the thrill of certain danger if one 
thoughtless move were made. 

She was conscious of spinning by the two big 
horses tramping their way back to the mill, of 
glimpses of a road on her right, and of bush on 
her left, and of racing down a last slope on to a 
wide flat, a curious flat, unlike anything she had 
ever imagined. As far now as she could see 
there were no green trees, there was only fern 
and scrub, with enormous table-topped stumps, 
bleached white, rising everywhere above the 
parched brown. And here and there were clumps 
of twisted skeletons patched white and black, piti- 
ful remnants left by many a fire to mark that 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 25 

lesser company of trees that had stood around the 
giant kauri like pages round a throne. 

The great stumps stretched out their roots 
above the ground like the arms of an octopus, and 
all above them and around them rose visible waves 
of heat like the lines on watered silk. In spite 
of the wind created by the speed of the truck, 
Sidney was excessively hot. 

In a few minutes buildings and timber stacks 
covering an extensive area began to shape them- 
selves in the film ahead, and now above the roar 
and rattle of the truck she heard intermittent 
sounds that she could not recognise. 

On the outskirts of the concentrated part of 
the village Jack Ridgefield braked the truck to a 
standstill. 

With an inquisitive glance down an avenue of 
timber stacks at a huge zinc mill belching boards, 
she followed him along a narrow track in the 
fern, past stumps and rotting logs, at the back of 
a cluster of small houses, till they came to a newly- 
built structure set in the middle of a burnt patch. 
It looked to her just like a little shed. 

“This is the school,” said Jack, pausing a mo- 
ment. 

She was rather astonished at its crudeness, but 
in a mood of being prepared for anything re- 
marked merely that it would seem small after 
what she was accustomed to. Then she followed 


2 6 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

him on round the burnt patch to the end of a row 
of cottages, surrounded by paling fences, set a 
chain or two apart, on the western side of the 
village. 

In this row lived the mill aristocracy. First 
nearest the school was her own house. Then came 
Jack Ridgefield’s, then that of Bob Lindsay, his 
chief accountant, then the head saw doctor’s, and 
at the end, the chief engineer’s. 

In front of her own prim little gate Jack turned 
with one of his rare smiles. 

“Well, Miss Carey, here you are.” 

He opened the gate, and followed her in. He 
picked up her two bags which had already reached 
her verandah, opened her front door, and stepped 
after her into her one large room. It was filled 
with furniture and trunks and boxes of books. 

“We’ve left everything for you to fix as you 
want it, Miss Carey, but I’ll come along after 
dinner and open up your boxes, and you can have 
all the help you need. If you don’t like the 
shelves where they are I’ll move them. Any- 
thing you want done can be done without any 
trouble. The whole place will want to look after 
you. As a teacher here you’ll be a god. You’ll 
probably be bored to death.” 

She smiled eloquently at him. 

“It will take a lot to kill me,” she said gaily. 

“That’s fortunate, or perhaps it isn’t.” Now 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 27 

I’ll take you to the Mackenzies. We’ve arranged 
for the present for them to give you your meals. 
You can make any change later you like. But as 
Mrs. Mackenzie is the best cook in the place you 
will probably stick to her.” 

At the saw doctor’s cottage a pleasant little 
Scotch woman bustled out to meet them. Sidney’s 
eyes lit up at the sight of her. She looked so 
hospitable and capable, as indeed she was. 

Jack introduced them briefly. 

“Come in, Miss Carey. You must be very 
tired and hot.” 

“I’m leaving you in good hands,” said Jack 
turning away. “I’ll see you later on.” 

Sidney entered an oppressively immaculate little 
dining-room, with a beeswaxed floor that she 
knew set a standard for the village, and every- 
thing shining aggressively in keeping. 

Mrs. Mackenzie, flustered with importance, 
drew forward a rocker to the open window. 

“Sit here, Miss Carey. The mill whistle will 
blow in five minutes and then my husband and 
boy will be here, so we’ll wait for them. But 
you shall have a cup of tea at once.” 


CHAPTER III 


By the middle of the afternoon Sidney had 
hardly begun to unpack the boxes and trunks that 
Jack had opened for her, because she had been 
beguiled from real work by the interest of examin- 
ing her little house and the school. 

She had settled with James Ridgefield that she 
would try the experiment of living by herself. 
She had almost enough furniture, she said, and 
he told her the Board would supply necessary 
things that she would leave behind. He assured 
her she would be perfectly safe, and he agreed 
with her that she would not want parents about 
her ears all the while, that her soul, being rather 
an individual specimen, would need all the alone- 
ness it could get in a place where her habits would 
be continuously in the centre of the village green, 
as it were, for inspection. 

“They mustn’t know you smoke,” he had said. 

“Of course not,” she laughed, thinking that 
would be easy. 

In fact, she thought it would all be easy, ab- 
surdly easy, as she made her first exploration. 

Her little house had a peculiar charm. It was 
28 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 29 

brand new, unpainted, as were all the other 
houses, and zinc-roofed. It had one large room, 
as rooms went there, with an open fireplace, two 
large windows (one set in an alcove with a broad 
seat) , and well placed bookshelves. It ran from 
front to back, and opening off it were a bedroom 
and a kitchen. The whole thing was unpapered, 
simply lined and ceiled with heart of kauri, sweet 
with the exquisite freshness of the pine. 

In the yard she had found a woodshed and 
wash-house, and the primitive sanitary arrange- 
ment of those parts. There was a fine pile of 
wood cut ready for her and a big box of kindling. 
One or two heavy thunderstorms had fortunately 
half-filled her zinc tank. The ground round her 
house had been dug, and someone had begun a 
flower garden for her. She was deeply touched 
by all this preparation. 

For a chain or more outside her fence the fern 
had been recently burnt off, as it had round the 
school and all the other houses. Sidney was to 
learn later that in the summer and autumn fire 
was the demon against which the whole village 
guarded unceasingly. 

When she had gone through her house half a 
dozen times, changing her mind each time as to 
where she would put her furniture, she walked 
over to the school. It was the smallest institu- 
tion for the improvement of the race that she 


3 o THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

had ever seen. Its one room and porch were like 
a toy house. But in her comprehensive mood of 
loving everything she felt an instant passion of 
proprietorship for it. 

The desks and furniture were all there waiting 
to be arranged. Again she blessed the Ridge- 
fields, father and son, for having made her be- 
ginnings so easy. So far she had not discovered 
anything essential that they had not thought of, 
and even the Board had been prompt with her 
first batch of supplies. 

She was full of unbounded interest and curiosity 
about the whole place. 

After dinner she had stood on Mrs. Mac- 
kenzie’s verandah looking over the tops of build- 
ings at the mill. Set at the corner of the village 
farthest from the school it dominated the plain as 
a cathedral dominates a mediaeval town. Its two 
giant smoke funnels rose, spires of industry, above 
everything for miles around. 

The village lived by it, for it. The first morn- 
ing whistle woke the whole place up; the second 
started streams of men along paths leading to it 
’from all directions. At the third there arose a 
palpitating roar of machinery that vibrated out 
over the flat. Later whistles guided the lives of 
the men and their families throughout the day. 
In case of fire there was hardly a man who would 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 31 

not have deserted his own belongings and rushed 
to save it first. 

The plain about the mill extended for some six 
miles one way and three the other. It was a kind 
of table top between the lower ranges about 
Whakapara and the higher ones of the Puhipuhi 
proper. It dropped into deep gullies on three 
sides. 

Thirty years before the entire flat had been 
covered with one of the finest bits of big kauri in 
the country. It had been cut by James Ridge- 
field’s predecessor, who left him the much harder 
job of working out the forest on the ranges. The 
flat was thus a graveyard for the old trees, their 
enormous stumps the eloquent tablets to their 
memory. 

The Puhipuhi had also known the glamour of 
silver mines. Years before, the rumour of metal 
back in the ranges had drawn a horde of pros- 
pectors seeking a new El Dorado, and though the 
gullies were mostly strewn with forlorn hopes, the 
magic name still clung, and there were still men 
who poked about its stony ravines with imperish- 
able optimism. 

Mrs. Mackenzie had taken Sidney past the 
engineer’s house at the end of the row, to a spot 
where they got an uninterrupted view of the mill 
dam and the open plain beyond. The mill was 
built beside a shallow bush creek that came down 


32 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

from the ranges. Nothing but the genius of 
James Ridgefield and his son could have made a 
working proposition of that summer dry water- 
course. By a series of fourteen dams on various 
tributaries back in the hills the power for bring- 
ing logs down to the mill was so well managed 
that it never ran out of timber. When the mill 
dam got low and the logs scarce the “system” was 
set to work, and the birds of that country fled 
from the extraordinary sight of great trees 
bobbing down the dry river bed on the first rush 
of a flood that came from no rain they knew of. 

So there was always more or less water in the 
mill dam, and when it was full it made a narrow 
lake an eighth of a mile wide at the facing and 
a mile long up the creek. Then, too, the over- 
flow roared down a precipitous ravine into a 
lovely gully that broke the flat a chain or so be- 
hind the cottages. There was a curious rock 
formation under the dam that carried off at all 
times a certain amount of water by an unseen 
waterfall, so that if one stood in the gully below 
looking up the face of the precipice, there would, 
when the dam was low, be no sign of water fall- 
ing anywhere, and yet there it gushed out at one’s 
feet with weird cavernous gurgles, to run swiftly 
on through the valley. It made a continuous under- 
current of sound, often drowned by day by the 
greater noises of the mill, but always by night an 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 33 

accompaniment to the breeze that stirred the fern. 

Between the place where Sidney and Mrs. Mac- 
kenzie stood and the dam itself was a second bed 
where the creek had divided on coming to the 
precipice. This was now always dry, and above 
it was built the wooden framework of a railway 
that carried large trucks of sawdust and timber 
ends to be tipped over into an everlasting fire that 
burned on the face of the ravine among the rocks, 
occasionally shooting bursts of flame that were 
visible by night for miles, always smoking, always 
perfuming the air, always spitting and cracking 
and sparking. Every now and then, too, there 
would be a sharp crack like the shot from a small 
cannon that would make a newcomer jump, as a 
rock split with the heat. 

Sidney observed enough of all this to realize 
the individuality of the place, and to have some- 
thing inside her go out to meet it. 


CHAPTER IV 


That evening, after supper, or tea as the vil- 
lage called it, Jack Ridgefield brought the school 
committee to meet her. 

Sidney had never thought of a school commit- 
tee. She had never come in contact with one, as 
that was the business of headmasters. She did 
not even know the duties of a school committee. 
She had taken it for granted that she would have 
official relations only with James Ridgefield and 
his son. 

She was in the midst of unpacking when she 
heard the tramping of feet on the baked ground 
outside her fence. Looking through her window 
she saw six men filing through her gate after Jack 
Ridgefield. She recognised Tom Mackenzie, the 
saw doctor, as one of them. 

As she stood framed in her open doorway, her 
face flushed with stooping, her eyes alight with 
an instant recognition of the human interest in 
the curiously assorted group with its hats off in 
front of her, each man according to his vision got 
a picture of her that stirred him to profound re- 
spect. Subconsciously they were all influenced 
34 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 35 

by her official position. To them she was more 
than woman, as a minister and a doctor are more 
than man to the small community dependent on 
them for emotional and physical comfort. Firstly, 
she was The Teacher. Secondly, in her simple 
blue print dress, she was a very attractive girl, 
much younger than they had expected. 

“This is your school committee, Miss Carey,” 
began Jack Ridgefield, with something like a 
twinkle in the corner of his eyes. “We wish 
to welcome you in the name of the village.” 

“My school committee !” she exclaimed. “Why, 
do I have one?” 

As she looked at the youthful appearance of 
the men her comical surprise dispelled a certain 
stiffness that had threatened to make the occasion 
formal. 

“Of course you do,” he smiled back. 

“Please come in,” she said, forgetting the state 
of her room. There was not a chair that was 
not piled up with books or clothes. 

“Of course we have come to help you to un- 
pack, Miss Carey,” said Bob Lindsay, the ac- 
countant, who was the village humorist. 

Sidney flashed a responsive gleam back at his 
merry blue eyes, recognising him as a kindred 
spirit. 

“Don’t move anything, please,” began Jack, 
hurriedly. “We won’t stay a minute unless there 


36 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

is really anything we can do. Later in the week 
we will meet you officially to find out what we 
have forgotten. Now let me introduce your 
humble servants. Mr. Bob Lindsay, your chair- 
man. Mr. Mackenzie, whom you already know, 
your secretary. Mr. Alec Graham, our chief en- 
gineer, the treasurer. Mr. Stanley Dickson, our 
cook. He is the mill autocrat. He would be the 
hardest of all of us to replace. If everybody else 
fails you he will see that you do not starve.” The 
cook was much pleased by this digression. “Mr. 
Dave Hansen and Mr. George Brody. They 
will do more for you than the rest of us put to- 
gether. They’ve promised to keep the grounds in 
order, look after your wood supply, and do any 
carpentering you want. And, incidentally, they 
each have four children coming to school.” 

Sidney had tried to give each man an individual 
greeting, and because the last two had been the 
only ones mentioned as parents, she paused to 
ask them questions. 

“Our boss has left himself out,” said Bob 
Lindsay, with a smile at his employer. “He has 
refused to be anything but vice-chairman.” 

“I think a school is the business of parents. 
I’m the only single man present. And the rest of 
your committee have children of school age. So 
I’m going to take a back seat on this.” 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 37 

Sidney rightly suspected him of inability to be 
anything but a paramount influence. 

The little group of men stood round her in a 
ring, the oldest of them, Tom Mackenzie, who 
was about forty, being years older than the cook, 
who came next. She was vividly conscious of 
their deference. And she thought what a curious 
thing officialdom was. Then and there those men 
constituted themselves her helpers and protectors. 
And when months afterwards some foul-mouthed 
worker used her name lightly in the presence of 
the cook he found himself dazed on the ground, 
with the raging Dickson calling upon him to re- 
tract his words or “take some more.” 

“I brought them last night purposely,” said 
Jack Ridgefield to her the next day. “I knew it 
would please the men.” By “the men” he meant 
the cook and the two mill workers. “It’s hard to 
be democratic with these chaps, and I take all the 
chances I see.” 

“Of course,” she answered approvingly. “And 
I can’t make any distinctions, even if I wished to. 
To me they are all parents. By the way, would 
you give me a list of the children who are com- 
ing? I want to call on the mothers.” 

“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” he objected. 

“Why?” She raised her eyebrows at him. “I 
came a week earlier to do it. You bring the 


38 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

fathers to me. Of course I must go to see the 
mothers.’’ 

She was disturbed by this first opposition. 

Then he told her rather bluntly about Mrs. Bill 
Hardy, the wife of the sad-eyed driver of the 
horses. 

“They have eleven children,” he said, “and 
poor Bill doesn’t know how many of them are his. 
Only one of them looks like him. It’s a favourite 
pastime in the kitchen trying to match the rest up 
among the men. Six *of them will be coming to 
school. At first we said we wouldn’t have them. 
But poor Bill took it so badly, and went away and 
got drunk, and when he came back we hadn’t the 
heart to stick to it. The kids are harmless any- 
way. The only trouble is they use foul language. 
But we’ve cautioned Bill and Mrs. Bill that if 
they do that in the school grounds they will be 
expelled. Now you really can’t call on Mrs. 
Bill. And I’ve forbidden her to come near you.” 

“You have !” A flush of annoyance spread over 
Sidney’s face. “May I ask why?” 

“Because she’s not fit for any decent woman 
to see.” 

He looked down upon her with the old- 
fashioned respect that is both obnoxious and 
charming to the modern independent young 
woman. 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 39 

“Why, she couldn’t hurt me, and I might do 
her good ” 

“You might!” 

She regretted that foolish remark. 

“Well, after all, she is a parent. And why 
do you have them here if she is as bad as that?” 

“Bill is the best man with horses in New 
Zealand,” he said slowly. “And his wife is not 
his fault. I’ve tried to get rid of her and him. 
I’ve sacked him ever so many times, and she’s 
deserted him ever so many times. But he always 
comes back to me, and she always comes back to 
him. And I always take him back, and he always 
takes her back. I bow to the inevitable. Can 
you explain it, Miss Carey?” 

Sidney laughed suddenly, and her resentment 
at his interference left her. 


CHAPTER V 


But Sidney had her way about visiting the 
mothers. At the end of her first week she had 
seen all of them except Mrs. Bill Hardy. She 
had compromised with Jack to that extent, but 
not until he had told her something that had 
caused her many times to break off in her prepara- 
tions and laugh immoderately. 

“If you will pardon me, Miss Carey,” he had 
said, “I really think you had better take my ad- 
vice about Mrs. Bill. She can be a horrible 
nuisance. And I have at last got her to keep from 
pestering the women in the place.” 

“Then she does take notice of you?” 

“She does,” he said grimly. 

“Why?” she asked, suddenly curious. 

He hesitated a minute. 

“Well, about a year ago, before I had built 
my house, when I lived in a shanty, I came home 
one evening about nine to find Mrs. Bill in my 
bunk. She’d tried it on every man in the place. 
But I never thought she’d try it on me.” 

He looked over her head while a queer smile 
distorted his mouth. 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 41 

“I went out, and before she saw what I was 
going to do I had a bucket of cold water over her, 
bunk and all. I gave her two minutes to get out, 
and told her if ever she set foot on my ground 
again I’d have her arrested for stealing. When 
she’d gone I went and told Bill, poor devil, and 
sacked him again. He got drunk and he beat 
her, and broke her arm among other things. In 
fact, what he did to her would have killed many 
a woman, so I heard afterwards from a Whan- 
garei doctor. I had to tell the story to the police 
down there to save Bill from being prosecuted. 
She was in the hospital for two months. She’s 
never been near me since, and she’s been mighty 
quiet and civil whenever I’ve met her around.” 

This tale decided Sidney that she had better 
leave her meeting with Mrs. Bill to chance cio 
cumstance. She was flattered that Jack had told 
her, rightly judging there would be few women to 
whom he would have trusted the story. 

Sidney was sadly disappointed in the personality 
of the village. What she had heard of “raw 
human material” had led her to expect that she 
would discover treasures of native wit and 
philosophy in the bush settlement. But the village 
was too prosperous. Everybody in it was saving 
money. And the women especially reflected the 
influence of growing bank accounts. They had 
evolved from the crude state that produces native 


42 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

philosophers into the state of “getting on in the 
world” wherein philosophers rapidly perish and 
die. The village was almost a perfect specimen 
of bourgeois respectability. Mrs. Bill was the 
one blot upon its fair escutcheon. There was no 
Irish “drunk” to delight Sidney’s heart, no cock- 
ney charwoman to take the world with vivid 
humour. 

Not a woman in that place dared to have a 
front room suite of furniture that differed es- 
sentially from anyone else’s. And if anyone had 
tried to set up a new style of decoration, or had 
deviated from the accepted white bed quilt and 
white lace curtains, she would have been regarded 
as an eccentric snob and severely criticised. 

The aristocracy of the mill naturally held itself 
a little apart, but in the kindness of its heart it 
allowed itself to be neighbourly. Mrs. Mac- 
kenzie, Mrs. Lindsay and Mrs. Graham knew it 
was their duty as superiors to help the less for- 
tunate wives of “the men,” the generic term ap- 
plied to all who did not live in the row with Jack 
Ridgefield. They were willing to be seen on the 
bowling green, where the men all met on equal 
terms, and take their turn at giving the teas, feel- 
ing that peculiar exaltation that is the reward of 
patronesses all the world over when they lend 
their gracious presences to give distinction to a 
gathering of humbler folk. 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 43 

Of the trio, Mrs. Mackenzie was by far the 
most intelligent and the most human, and among 
her superiors would always have been greatly 
respected for her sense and kindness. But here 
she had unconsciously acquired a pose as the 
leader of her sex, the result of her husband’s 
position. As he had preceded the other two in 
the Ridgefield employ, she felt she was entitled 
to senior rights, and was able to impress them 
without being unpleasant on both Mrs. Graham 
and Mrs. Lindsay. The fact that she had been 
selected to board the teacher was an enormous 
feather in her cap, and one she could not refrain 
from waving occasionally, though she humbly con- 
fided to the other two that she could not see why 
she was so honoured. 

Mrs. Graham and Mrs. Lindsay had one satis- 
faction denied to Mrs. Mackenzie. Being no 
rivals, but recognising their husbands as equal in 
the eyes of Jack Ridgefield, they enjoyed luxurious 
gossips on the absurd claims of Mrs. Tom to be 
better than they, and they had a kind of gentle- 
man’s agreement that they would stick together, 
and not try to get ahead of each other in the 
favour of Mrs. Mackenzie or anyone else. They 
had to a>dmit in their secret hearts that as a cook 
Mrs. Tom was a marvel, and if one of them man- 
aged to coax a method or a recipe out of her she 
was in honour bound to share it with the other. 


44 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

These three set the standards for the village. 
The wives of “the men” sniffed at them, envied 
them and copied them. 

Naturally the coming of Sidney provided a 
sensation. Every scrap of information that could 
be gleaned about her beforehand had been worn 
to shreds in rapid and continuous passage from 
fence to fence. The main interest that summer 
•had been getting clothes ready for the children 
to make the finest possible impression upon the 
teacher, and those parents whose children had 
been unable to walk to the Whakapara school, 
had patiently struggled with the alphabet and 
reading and sums, in order that their offspring 
should make as good a mental showing as pos- 
sible. 

Of course the women of the village knew the 
teacher would be immeasurably beyond them, 
somewhere up in those lofty strata of society of 
which they dreamed in moments of yearning for 
better things. And what James Ridgefield had 
told the Mackenzies of Sidney’s attainments 
added to her elevation. They knew perfectly well 
that all talk of their husbands about democracy, 
and all men being equal in Socialist New Zealand 
was just rubbish when it came to women. They 
may have wondered why they were not as good 
as Miss Carey, but they knew they were not, and 
that was the end of it. 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 45 

As far as the trio were concerned, they felt 
they would at least have the great and glorious 
satisfaction of rivalling each other for her notice. 
Fortunately for their continued friendship they 
each had children to go to school to report what 
the teacher said and did. 

Mrs. Mackenzie had one boy twelve years old, 
a quiet precocious boy, who was not a success as 
a news carrier, but who was destined to win a 
scholarship under Sidney, to the everlasting pride 
of his parents and the glory of the village. 

Mrs. Graham was secretly delighted that she 
had a bright and dainty little girl for whom she 
had prepared clothes that she knew would dis- 
tinguish her beyond any other child. Fortunately 
Mrs. Bob had no girl to rival her, but two boys, 
intelligent and merry like their father. These 
boys were not slow to perceive, nor their mother 
to inform them, that the school was peculiarly 
their perquisite as their father was chairman of 
the committee. 

On the day of Sidney’s arrival Mrs. Mackenzie 
had a continuous succession of proud moments. 
Not only was she delighted to be the first woman 
to set eyes on her and talk to her, but she was 
thrilled by the prestige she derived from the event 
in the eyes of her neighbours. No sooner was 
Sidney back in her own house than Mrs. Bob and 
Mrs. Alec, who had been looking through their 


4 6 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

windows to see that neither got ahead of the 
other, ran simultaneously out of their front gates 
to meet at Mrs. Tom’s back door. 

They were all agitated as to whether they 
should call on Sidney, or wait for invitations, or 
be called on by her. Bob Lindsay was delegated 
to ask Jack Ridgefield the etiquette of the situa- 
tion. Not for worlds would either of the three 
have failed to do the correct thing. Nor would 
one of them risk doing anything without the other. 
Jack’s reply was that Sidney would call on them, 
and that then they should wait for her invita- 
tions. 

“For heaven’s sake, ask the three of them to- 
gether,” he said to Sidney as he talked it over 
with her. 

“I see,” she laughed. 

And understanding perfectly she had them all 
to tea on the Friday afternoon. Even Mrs. Mac- 
kenzie was affected with nervousness, but they 
grew more composed as the visit progressed, feel- 
ing sure that they were all behaving correctly. 

They were all amazed at the difference between 
the teacher’s tastes and their own. She had no 
suite of furniture, no lace curtains. She had no 
sofa or couch, as they understood those objects of 
veneration. She had what looked to them like an 
ordinary single stretcher bed with a strange cover 
over it that they did not recognise as a fine 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 47 

oriental, and an extravagant lot of cushions. She 
did not have two chairs alike. She had pictures 
that rather alarmed them, and two little statues 
they thought indecent. Her books they took 
calmly, unable to distinguish between them. She 
had copper dishes they could imagine no use for, 
and her curtains were queer like the bed cover. 

But they had a wonderful gossip about it all 
afterwards. Not for a moment did they question 
her superiority, and already they asked themselves 
how they might imitate her. 

Into this hornet’s nest of touchiness and rivalry 
Sidney strode smiling, conscious of a good deal of 
it, and determined to be very careful to have no 
favourites. She knew everything she said and did 
would be talked from fence to fence. She knew 
her position was impregnable, but because she 
was naturally a diplomat among women, and good 
humoured and idealistic, she meant to manage her 
parents without giving cause for bitterness. 

In visiting all the other mothers she had been 
careful not to appear to know everything about 
children. She had shown she would not expect 
too much of them. There had been nothing 
patronizing in her manner. She had succeeded 
so well that everyone warmed to her and trusted 
her. By the Friday night there was only one 
mother left for her to visit. 


CHAPTER VI 


It was with a feeling of expecting nothing that 
Sidney set off the next afternoon across the siz- 
zling fern in the direction of the ranges to see the 
mother of the three Maori children who were 
among her pupils. 

The hills to the northeast were veiled in a 
violet haze. The smell of burnt fern sweetened 
the hot air that scarcely moved above the flat. 
The whitened stumps around her looked like an 
array of plates set upon parched greenery for 
some giant’s feast. Their uniformity of size and 
height was extraordinary. She tried to picture 
the trees that had once stood upon those great 
foundations, and the immense peace of the forest 
they adorned. It was a pleasant picture to con- 
jure up on this stifling afternoon as she made her 
way along the dusty narrow tracks that cut in all 
directions across the flat to the main road lead- 
ing up from Whakapara to the Puhipuhi. 

Jack Ridgefield had told her how to get to her 
destination, nearly three miles away. But he did 
not hint at what she would find there. 

As she looked from the ridge down upon it, 

48 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 49 

Sidney called it the Joyous Valley right away. It 
was really little more than a hollow. And it was 
cultivated from top to bottom and from end to 
end. To a person standing above, it was like an 
upturned smiling face. And it beckoned hospita- 
bly. It said “Come down and play with me.” 

Set in the middle of it she saw the ordinary 
bush cottage, with its verandah along the front, 
its lean-to at the back, and the detached sheds in 
the yard. It was almost covered with creepers 
and surrounded with flowers. It was built beside 
a stream that cut the farm in half, a delightful 
stream that gurgled along a ferny way to fall at 
the end of the hollow into the beginnings of an- 
other gully. Sidney saw fields with horses and 
cows, plots of corn and potatoes, grape vines, a 
large vegetable garden, and many little houses for 
bees. She was struck, as she walked on, with the 
orderliness of everything. The Maori, though 
possessing aesthetic sense and appreciation, is not, 
like temperamental people elsewhere, always 
famous for his tidiness. 

A puppy rose up from the verandah and barked 
at Sidney. Then she saw a face appear and dis- 
appear at a window. 

As she stood in the doorway she was astonished 
to see a piano and books and pictures inside the 
front room, but not so much astonished that a 
Maori should possess them as that they should be 


50 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

there, in that remote place. While staring at un- 
expected things she was conscious of a flurry of 
movement in the back part of the house. She 
knew somebody was getting ready to meet her. 

She forgot she was hot and tired when Mana 
Tahere came through the middle door. 

Mana was a splendid thing, taller and 
straighter than most Maori women. She be- 
longed to the family of a northern chief, and 
showed her patrician ancestry in every line of her 
fine features, and every movement of her beauti- 
ful body. She had the unconscious dignity that 
clothes so subtly the bearing of aristocrats all 
the world over. She had, besides, the sensuous 
charm of the South Seas. And she had more. 
Because there was some white blood in her she 
had an elusive sophistication added to the philo- 
sophical temperament of her own race. 

She had been educated and brought up in an 
Episcopal school, and years of living on the land 
had not driven her back to her native dress or 
customs. She had slipped on a violet print dress, 
and tossed her heavy black hair in a circling coil 
round her head. A magnificent greenstone tiki 
hung on a black ribbon above her breast, and fine 
greenstone earrings dangled alluringly from her 
ears. 

Her cheeks had a peach blush under their pale 
tawny skin. Her nose was straight, and her lips 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 51 

full and finely moulded. But it was the glamour 
of her manner, and the lure of her soft gazelle- 
like eyes, dark with that haunting mystery that 
so bewitches the white man, that fascinated Sid- 
ney into immediate delight in her. 

“I am Miss Carey, the teacher,” she said at 
once, holding out her hand. 

“From the mill? How kind of you to come all 
this way! You surely haven’t walked!” 

She drew a rocking chair to the open window. 

“Oh, yes, I love walking.” Sidney continued 
to stare frankly at her. 

“Then you must be very hot.” 

Mana caught sight of a head at the door. 

“Hira, bring a glass of water, and don’t stare, 
dearie,” she said to it. 

Then she sat down in a low chair opposite 
Sidney. 

“I am so glad to have my children come to 
your school. It was too far for them to go to 
Whakapara. But you will find them very stupid. 
They know so little. I am afraid they will be a 
great trouble to you, and I quite expect they will 
be the duffers of the school.” 

Sidney was struck with the contrast between 
Mana’s words and the remarks of most of the 
village parents about the talents of their off- 
spring. 

“They will be no trouble to me,” she answered 


52 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

positively. “I shall be able to give more in- 
dividual attention here in a small school than I 
could in a city one. I hope I may see your chil- 
dren to-day.” 

“Yes, Miss Carey, when they become tidy.” 

Then Hira, a little soft-eyed girl, wistful and 
shy, stole in like a spirit with a glass of water. 
She had no shoes or stockings on, and over her 
shirt but one print garment that did not reach to 
her knees. There was a remarkable delicacy 
about her. She looked as if a wind would blow 
her away. 

“This is my Hira,” said her mother. “Hira, 
this is your kind teacher who has come a long 
way to help little girls to learn all sorts of won- 
derful things. Shake hands and tell her you are 
going to be very good.” 

The child did it with indescribable sweetness, 
and stole out as unobtrusively as she had stolen in. 

“YouVe been a week at the mill,” Mana smiled 
curiously at her guest. “What do you think 
of it?” 

“I don’t quite know. Do you go there often?” 
Sidney wondered if she were friendly with any- 
one there. She had not heard anyone speak of 
her. 

“I only go to the store,” answered Mana. 

“You don’t call on the aristocracy?” 

Mana’s eyes lit up. 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 53 

“No. I don’t care for gossip. I suppose I 
am unsociable.” 

“Unfortunately I can’t be,” said Sidney. 

Mana looked at her. “I wouldn’t have your 
job for anything,” she said, smiling sympathet- 
ically. 

“I know,” laughed Sidney. “I feel as if I were 
naked on the top of a post down there. I am 
sure that when I first put my washing out some- 
body will report on the kind of lace I have on 
my under-clothes, and the shape of my night- 
gowns.” 

“Of course they will. They have not had any- 
thing as interesting as you for a long while.” 

Sidney felt her spirits rising. She knew she 
could talk to Mana. 

“The worst of all is I shall never be able to 
say anything disagreeable. A teacher is expected 
to be so good.” 

“Yes, that is hard,” agreed Mana softly. 

“Much worse than that. It is uninteresting.” 

“Truly, very dull.” Mana’s eyes glowed again. 

“Aren’t you dull here, all alone?” asked Sidney. 

“Oh, no. I love the country. And I have 
the children and my friend Rangi. And many 
people come to stay with me. I am never dull.” 

“You fortunate person. That’s due to some- 
thing in yourself. And I forgot your garden. 
People with gardens are never dull.” 


54 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

“That’s it, I think. And the flowers are nicer 
than so many people. Now I must get you some 
tea. Will you excuse me?” 

When she had gone out Sidney stared round 
her with keen interest. *She saw that the books 
were mostly novels, including Wells and Conrad. 
The pictures on the wall were popular prints and 
photographs of Maori men and women. There 
were photos of Englishmen on small tables. She 
recognised one of James Ridgefield. There were 
fine old Maori weapons and pieces of carving on 
the walls, and native matting on the floor. The 
furniture was simple and varied. How she had 
escaped the suite that made every front room at 
the mill offensive, Sidney did not know. Like her- 
self, Mana had a couch that was really a stretcher 
bed. It was covered by a valuable Maori mat 
rich in huia feathers, and had picturesque 
cushions. 

The whole thing was individual, and nothing 
about it jarred. Sidney was delighted to think 
she would have it to take refuge in. She stole 
to the piano to look at the music. She saw there 
were a number of good concert songs, several of 
them for a baritone voice, and many books of 
piano pieces. 

When Mana returned with the tea she brought 
her three children with her, all fresh in plain 
print garments, and shoeless. There were two 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 55 

girls and a boy. At first they were too shy to 
speak, but Sidney had a way with children, and 
presently they were clustered round her listening 
to a fairy tale. 

Later, when their mother sent them out to play, 
Sidney begged for some music. 

She realized again the truth that life is full of 
surprises as she listened to her. Mana played 
and sang delightfully. She would never have 
made a public artist, for the stiffness of an audi- 
ence would have killed her spontaneity, and her 
flute-like voice would have been lost in a large 
hall. But here in her own little house she was 
always a seductive musician, and there was some- 
thing about her as she sat at her piano, crooning 
cradle songs to her children, or drawing whisper- 
ing romances from the keys, that produced a 
delicious coma in the brains of those who listened. 

Mana and Hira walked half way home with 
Sidney, partly to carry a basket of grapes for 
her, and partly to show her a short cut. 

Sidney learned that evening from Mrs. Mac- 
kenzie that Mana had a husband of her own race, 
an interpreter, who was away a good deal work- 
ing in the native land courts; that brothers and 
cousins descended upon her at intervals to fix up 
her farm for a season; that she had lived there 
for many years and was liked by everybody; that 
she never visited anyone, but that she now and 


56 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

again had famous visitors, for Mr. Hone Heke, 
M.P., and Dr. Pirani, Minister for Native 
Health, had stopped off on their way north to 
stay with her; and that James Ridgefield often 
took people to see her. 


CHAPTER VII 


Six weeks later, on a Saturday evening, Sidney 
walked out into the fern beyond her house to 
watch the moon rise over the Puhipuhi. A faint 
haze shrouded the flat with a gossamer film, so 
that what skeleton trees there were looked like 
shadows touched in delicately by a super artist 
upon the silver glow. Though the autumn was 
well on its way it was still warm enough to sit 
outside. 

After Sidney had looked for a while at the 
moon she turned down an old wagon track lead- 
ing into the gully at the back of the cottages. She 
wanted to be alone for the evening, and she was 
never sure of solitude if she stayed about her 
house or the school. Already a light in her 
windows acted like a magnet to draw some child 
or parent who wanted to know something that 
they supposed only she could tell them. 

And Sidney felt she needed the gully. She had 
barely got home from her tea that evening when 
Bob Lindsay knocked at her front door. She was 
always glad to see Bob. She would have been 
gladder still to see him if he had not always been 
57 


58 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

so furtively glad to see her. He was easily 
emotional about women, and it was obvious that 
his dull wife had no hold on him whatsoever. 
He had a piano and a melting tenor voice, and 
was always begging Sidney to drop in in the 
evenings and play his accompaniments for him. 
She would have liked to go, but she saw she had 
to be careful with Bob. 

The great passion of his life was his devotion 
to Jack Ridgefield, and if there had been nothing 
else about him to admire, this would have con- 
stituted a bond between him and Sidney. 

“I’ve some news,” he said, as he sat down in 
her front room. “Give you five guesses.” 

His blue eyes, always merry, told her nothing. 

She tried twice. An inspector was coming. 
The school organ had arrived. Then she gave 
it up. 

“The boss is back.” 

Jack Ridgefield had been away for two weeks. 
“Well?” 

She had known he was expected that day or 
the next. 

“And he’s married. His wife’s with him. And 
he never even told pie he was engaged.” 

Bob was more taken up with this lack of con- 
fidence in himself than he was with the effect of 
the news on Sidney. In fact, it had never oc- 
curred to him that there would be any effect on 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 59 

Sidney. And he saw nothing out of the way in 
her astonishment. 

“What! That is something for the village to 
talk about,” she exclaimed, her eyes full of amuse- 
ment. “Have you seen her? What is she like?” 

“I haven’t. They drove in while everybody 
was at supper. Jack told me ten minutes ago. 
I’m not telling anybody but you to-night. I guess 
the gossips can wait.” 

Sidney had to smile at his manner of making 
exceptions. Then he went on to tell her that the 
school organ had arrived, and that they were 
going to move it in in the morning. 

When he was gone she put on her coat and 
went out, feeling curiously bereft of something, 
she hardly knew what. 

For six weeks she had been consumed with 
interest in Jack Ridgefield. She was not physically 
in love with him. But she had wondered if she 
ever would be. She had a passion of admiration 
for him, as she had always had for men of stirring 
action. It was a mental passion, but her mental 
passions were just as fierce as any physical ones. 

Though her admiration for him had fed her 
mentality he himself had provided no company. 
She had never had a chance to be human with him 
for more than a minute. She had noticed that 
whenever she forgot she was a teacher and began 
to be a woman he became aloof and went off. 


Go THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 


She told herself she could have given him a per- 
fectly distinterested friendship as she had his 
father, and she was piqued to think he had not 
cared to take it. 

■ He had been in many ways the most discon- 
certingly uncomplimentary man she had ever 
known. Though he had shown no interest in her 
as a human being he had gone out of his way to 
be helpful to her as a teacher. He had seen her 
every day for a month to be sure she had every- 
thing she wanted. And when he went away he 
left her formally in the care of Bob Lindsay. 
Sometimes he had stayed as long as half an hour 
to talk shrewdly about the village parents and 
such minor problems as the school provided. At 
others he had come and gone with a question. 

As he was still there to be admired she won- 
dered, as she walked down into the gully, why 
she should feel so blank about his marriage, why 
she felt the chagrin, the hurt vanity of someone 
who had been snubbed. It was silly, she told 
herself. 

But for the first time in her life she had a pain- 
ful sense of her grievous loneliness. 

And more than that, she was now troubled by 
the lack of challenge in her work. There was 
nothing big or dramatic about her “daily round.” 
Her “common task” was much too common for 
her, and she had no sentimental illusions about 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 6 1 

“brightening the corner where you are.” She 
yearned for obstacles. She had come up primed 
to conquer them, only to find there were not any. 

The shy and docile country children hardly pre- 
sented a difficulty after some of the city classes 
she had known. Even the Hardy children were 
no trouble to her. After one or two solemn talks 
on the subject of their vocabulary they made such 
desperate efforts to be good that they could not 
be considered a bother. 

The rather dull brains of most of her pupils 
did not worry her. She could grade them as she 
pleased, and she knew that in a new school what- 
ever she did would be taken without question. As 
Sidney Carey, she could even have loafed on her 
job without fear of criticism. She thought long- 
ingly of a class of sixty boys she had had in Auck- 
land, a terrible class that faced her every morn- 
ing keen to get the best of her all day long. It 
had taken her two months to get them under, and 
even then she had to interest them, keep them 
busy every minute, or face a riot. 

But here the twenty-five faces that smiled con- 
fidently at her as they answered their names were 
guileless of any intention to plague her. Even 
the boys never dreamt of mischief in those awe- 
inspiring precincts. To have been severely re- 
proved by her would have been generally felt to 
be an overwhelming disgrace. Of course Sidney 


62 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 


had cleverly created most of this atmosphere, and 
she was backed in the homes by the deferential 
regard of the parents. 

She knew now, also, that there would be noth- 
ing in her daily life to trouble her. When James 
Ridgefield was up three weeks before he had 
shown that he regarded her as a person to be 
pampered. He did realize better than anyone else 
the things she had to go without. He decided 
she should have a horse to ride, and w T hen she 
mentioned casually that she missed music, he 
asked at once if an organ in the school would be 
any use to her. 

“Then we can have services once in a while,” 
he had said. “That will please the women. They 
have been saying something about the place be- 
ing big enough now for a church.” 

“Oh dear,” groaned Sidney. “Then they will 
want me to teach Sunday school. But I refuse 
to give up a minute of my Sundays to anybody.” 

“Then don’t. There’s no reason why you 
should. You don’t have to mind what anyone 
here thinks about that.” 

“Thanks. You are the most satisfactory su- 
perior officer I ever heard of,” she laughed. 

She had been rejoiced to see James Ridgefield. 

He was a successful man of fifty, with a shrewd 
knowledge of human nature, and a lot of worldly 
wisdom. He had known Sidney since her girl- 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 63 

hood. There was a warm, thoroughly honest 
friendship between them. Though he was chair- 
man of the Board of Education they both forgot 
the fact. She had never traded on it to get 
favours, and he had never assumed the right to 
dictate to her about anything she wanted to do. 
She knew that as far as he was concerned she was 
as independent in his mill school as she would 
have been under another Board. He was con- 
cerned solely with her comfort. 

But the trouble with Sidney was that she was 
too clear-sighted to be satisfied only with comfort. 
And though she despised the idea of being an 
example in the ordinary sense, she was not with- 
out her notions of the mission of the teacher. 
She meant to influence her children. She meant 
to be something they would talk about when they 
grew up. She wanted to influence the parents. 
She was in ways a born reformer and would never 
quite get over it. But the thing that appalled her 
here was the conviction that she would never 
change anyone’s ideas. 

She saw she had only to suggest a new way of 
doing some familiar thing, such as bottling toma- 
toes, and everybody in the place would at least 
have tried it. But if she had suggested a new 
way of thinking about God as force, or sin as 
defective education, they could not have followed 
her an inch. 


6 4 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

At the end of six weeks she hated the smug 
prosperity of the mill population. She had heard 
there were “characters” about — men in the bush, 
and women in a little back settlement that re- 
joiced in the explanatory name of Harlot Town, 
but she knew she would never see them. So far 
she had not set eyes on Mrs. Bill Hardy, whom 
she suspected of having distinctive traits. 

She saw sadly that as far as the village was 
concerned there was neither stimulus nor diver- 
sion to be had. And now, with Jack Ridgefield 
married, some edge had gone off her interest in 
him. 

She thought gratefully of Mana, whom she had 
been to see again. But she could not hope to see 
her oftener than twice a month, for she did not 
lack employment. She did her own housekeeping 
on Saturdays and Sundays, and she had already 
seen the possibility of a scholarship for George 
Mackenzie if she gave him extra tutoring, which 
she had made up her mind to do. He was her 
only clever scholar, and she was glad to think she 
could give him this chance. 

As she walked back and forth on the old wagon 
track the beauty of the night diverted her. On 
the side of the gully running up to the cottages 
there were no trees, only the everlasting fern 
and stumps, but immediately across the track on 
the lower side there was one of the most perfect 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 65 

bits of undisturbed bush in the whole country. 
The kauri saplings there had been too small to be 
felled when the rest had been cut, and they stood 
like beautiful slender grey pillars rising above 
the soft rimu and titoki and nikau and fern. 

Sidney walked to the creek that rushed out at 
the foot of the precipice below the mill dam. 
Here was a glade of legendary loveliness, where 
one could imagine every kind of elf and pixie dis- 
porting itself in glee. It had formerly been the 
favoured haunt of bell birds who had immortal- 
ized it with their incomparable song, and now the 
tuis perpetuated their memory by imitating their 
delectable notes in the depths of the dell. In the 
moonlight it was beyond all description elusively 
exquisite. 

Sidney had discovered it with delight, and was 
pleased to find that no one but herself seemed 
to want to go there. It was a wonderful place 
for a retreat and a smoke. The hidden waterfall, 
gurgling its mysterious way under the face of the 
ravine, made a stimulating accompaniment to 
thought. No sounds drifted down from the vil- 
lage, and nothing of it was visible but the top 
of the dam and the fantastic frame of the waste 
tramway, now caught and glorified by the moon. 
The mill fires, burning low, scarcely coloured the 
night. 

Sidney took out her cigarettes, and presently 


66 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

she forgot the lack of challenge in her life. On 
nights like these she felt the place could give her 
something no human being could, and she let her- 
self go out to meet the appeal in the calm moon 
and the pale stars. 

She was amused during the next week to receive 
a disgusted letter from James Ridgefield. 

“What the devil has that son of mine been do- 
ing? I didn’t know he had a thought of mar- 
riage in his head till I got his letter three days 
ago. I had visions that you and he might hit it 
off. Should have liked nothing better. Be 
warned. Never arrange anything for anybody. 
It’s fatal. Tell me what kind of woman he has 
married. I never have known his taste in girls. 
What should I give her?” 

At the end of the week, when Jack told Sidney 
his wife would be glad to see her, she had already 
adjusted her mind to the change. 


CHAPTER VIII 


Before she saw her Sidney was sorry for 
Sophie Ridgefield. She felt she was doomed to 
an even greater isolation than herself. She fore- 
saw that Jack would want to keep his wife apart 
from the gossip and pettiness of the village, and 
that probably she and Mrs. Jack would now con- 
stitute a little aristocracy of their own. For that 
reason she fervently hoped they would have some- 
thing in common. But, though she hoped for the 
best, she was not optimistic as she walked the 
short distance between the two houses on the 
Saturday afternoon. 

So far, nobody had seen the bride, about whom 
there was the fiercest curiosity. Mrs. Mackenzie 
had asked Sidney every day if she had met her, 
and had reported the absence of news afterwards 
to Mrs. Bob and Mrs. Alec. 

Sidney saw at once that she would like Sophie, 
and she was grateful to Jack for marrying her. 
Though the bride was nervous and shy, giving at 
first acquaintance no indication of the substance 
that was in her, Sidney was discerning enough to 
see that there was much more in her than met 
the eye. 


67 


68 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

Mrs. Jack was small and quiet. She had fine 
dark eyes and hair, a sensitive and expressive face, 
a nicely rounded figure, and beautiful little hands 
and feet. She was one of those people who carry 
elusive defences buried in their persons. It was 
impossible to imagine anyone’s being rude to her, 
or being in any way objectionable in her presence. 

But she was hard to talk to. She had not the 
modern fever for self-expression. Sidney thought 
her conversation colourless, but suspected that her 
husband had limited her by telling her to be very 
careful what she said. As a matter of fact Jack 
had told his wife that Sidney was the one person 
in the place she could trust and make a friend of. 
But Sophie was affected by what he had told her 
of Sidney’s cleverness, and it was to take her some 
time to feel at home with her. 

As she walked home, Sidney told herself that 
Jack’s marriage would probably turn out to be 
more interesting to her than his singleness. There 
would now be at least one house in the place where 
she could talk freely, one home that she could 
enter as an equal. And she foresaw that she 
might see more of Jack than she had before, and 
that now that he was married, he might be more 
human. 

About nine o’clock that night Sidney heard 
steps approaching her gate. She opened her door 
to see Bill Hardy with a lantern in his hand. 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 69 

“Good evening, miss,” he began respectfully. 

“Good evening, Mr. Hardy. Come in.” She 
wondered if he had come about her horse. 

He stepped timidly to the door, but would not 
enter. His manner towards everybody in the 
place was that of a creature that knew it had no 
excuse for living, and that apologised with every 
gesture for approaching others. Only when he 
was drunk did he recognise his human rights. 

“I’m sorry to trouble you, miss, but Rosy, my 
little girl ” he paused. 

“Oh, dear. I hope she isn’t ill.” She had sent 
the child home the day before looking very sick. 

“I’m afraid she is, miss. She’s wrong in the 
head. And she’s been calling ‘Teacher,’ miss.” 

“I’ll come with you at once,” said Sidney. 
“Have you sent for a doctor?” 

“No, miss.” 

“I’m very glad you came for me,” she said 
warmly. 

She did not know it had taken him two hours 
to screw up his courage to appeal to her. 

She wondered at once if she would at last see 
Mrs. Bill. The Hardy home was on the far side 
of the village, removed from it by the space of 
the kitchen garden that covered some acres. To 
reach it they had to cross the tramway and pass 
by the stables. Even before they entered it Sid- 
ney knew Mrs. Bill was no housekeeper. The 


70 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

' lantern light shone on heaps of tins and rubbish 
lying around. There was no attempt at a garden, 
and the fern encroached upon the yard. Even in 
that sweet windswept place the house smelt of 
garbage and stale food. 

In the front room a woman in a loose soiled 
wrapper rose up from a narrow cot over which 
she had been leaning. Hysterically worried 
though she was, Mrs. Bill suggested her usual air 
of cheerful brazenness. She was of the Amazon 
type, with green eyes and bleached hair. There 
was nothing sinister about her, even though she 
was almost uncannily vital. She suggested a 
sleepy tiger, after a full meal. 

Mrs. Bill was a rabbit among mothers. She 
glowed with fecundity. She bore the ravages of 
her passions with astonishing freshness and gaiety. 
In spite of eleven children of assorted fatherhood 
she was youthful, and her figure fairly well pre- 
served. It may be that paternal monotony often 
has a saddening effect upon the female of the 
species. At any rate Mrs. Bill flourished the 
happy results of polyandry in the eyes of all her 
monogamistic world. 

But she had not handed her vitality on to her 
children. They were a pale devitalized brood. 
Mrs. Bill’s vigour was fiercely individualistic. In 
some curious way it turned back upon herself. 

At any other time Sidney would have been in- 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 71 

terested to take stock of her, but she was con- 
cerned now about the child. She gave Mrs. Bill 
one quick look, determined to be very business- 
like with her, before she turned to the bed. 

Mrs. Bill was not nearly so sure of herself with 
women as she was with men, and she was clever 
enough to see that Sidney was too much for her. 
She presented her best maternal front at once. 

“I can’t make out what’s the matter with Rosy, 
miss. Very good of you to come,” she said 
obsequiously. 

“Not at all, Mrs. Hardy.” 

Sidney had taken first aid and nurses’ courses 
and knew from one glance at the face on the 
pillow that something was seriously wrong. The 
moaning child did not recognise her. It was fast 
sinking into a coma. 

“How long has she been like this?” she asked. 

“Most of the afternoon, miss.” 

“Why ever didn’t you come for me before?” 
she asked sharply. Then she saw they had hesi- 
tated about it. 

“Where’s the nearest doctor?” she went on 
more gently. 

“Whangarei, miss,” said Mrs. Bill. “Is she 
very bad?” 

“I’m afraid so,” Sidney looked her straight in 
the eyes. “Have your children never been ill? 
Don’t you know anything about nursing?” 


72 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

Mrs. Bill felt a condemnation of herself in 
Sidney’s tone. Coming from anyone else it would 
have aroused antagonism in her, but from the 
teacher it made her feel uncomfortable. 

“They’ve ’ad ’ooping cough, and the measles 
and colds,” she said. 

“Well, you know fever when you see it, don’t 
you? The child must have a temperature of 104. 
And it’s not a cold. It’s something internal. 
She’s getting blue. Somebody must go for a doc- 
tor at once.” 

She turned to Bill. 

“I’ll go, miss.” 

“Oh, no. You stay. I’ll see that somebody 
goes. Would you like me to come back?” 

“Please, miss.” It came from both of them. 

Taking his lantern Sidney hurried to the Ridge- 
fields’. Jack, who had just undressed, came to 
the door in his pajamas, expecting to see one of 
the men. 

“Why, Miss Carey! What’s wrong?” He 
was obviously conscious of his appearance. 

But she was oblivious of it. 

“One of Bill Hardy’s children is dying. Some- 
thing internal. Probably appendicitis.” 

“Oh, Lord! You’ve been there?” he frowned. 

She resented his attitude. 

“I have. Bill came for me. Of course I went. 
Is there no doctor nearer than Whangarei?” 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 73 

“Nobody any good. And I doubt if anyone 
would come up to-night.” 

She thought his calmness heartless. She did 
not realize that he had a much longer acquaint- 
ance with human tragedies than she had. 

“Why, it’s a matter of hours — an operation 
as soon as possible, if it’s appendicitis. What 
do you do in such cases?” 

“We’ve never had appendicitis. The worst 
thing we have is accidents. And we take them 
on stretchers to Whakapara to the train. We 
can telephone from there to Whangarei. I’ll 
get someone to go. But no doctor will come up 
till the morning, I know that.” 

“Have you a thermometer?” she asked, as he 
turned away. 

“Yes, just a minute.” 

When he brought it back Sophie followed him, 
a wrapper over her nightgown, although he had 
told her there was nothing she could do. 

“Does anyone up here know anything about 
nursing?” Sidney asked. “I don’t know what to 
do for this child.” 

“I doubt it. Ordinary illness is all we have 
had. And if anyone did she would not go near 
Mrs. Bill.” 

“Indeed! Well, I’m not afraid of her. I’ll 
do what I can,” she retorted. 

“You’re going back there?” 


74 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

“I certainly am.” She flashed a determined 
look at him. 

“Why, of course she will,” broke in Sophie. 
“If I can help, will you let me know, Miss 
Carey?” 

“Yes, indeed,” said Sidney, rather surprised at 
her offer. 

Jack’s eyes softened. 

“I’ll go after a messenger at once,” he said. 

Sidney hurried off with the thermometer. She 
found Bill and his wife sitting helplessly beside 
the cot. They had moved Rosy into their only 
room that was not a bedroom. It was a kitchen 
and eating room combined. It was dirty and close. 
No windows were open. Sidney knew the sick 
child had not been washed all day. 

“Could you get me some hot water, Mrs. 
Hardy,” she asked at once. “And we must have 
some air in here. I’ll leave the door open for a 
while.” 

Mrs. Bill was glad enough to do something. 

When Sidney took Rosy’s temperature she 
found it was 105. She was hardly sure whether 
she should let the poor little creature sip wa- 
ter, but she took that risk. Apart from making 
her clean she did not know what to do but wait 
for the doctor. 

It was not long before they heard a horse’s 
hoofs going off along the tramway. That sign 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 75 

of help to come cheered Bill, who sat without a 
word, a dumbly appealing object, beside the win- 
dow. 

He had not realized the child was really ill that 
morning, and he had been away all day with his 
horses. He never took the Saturday half holi- 
day, having nothing to take a holiday for. When 
he came home to tea he saw something was wrong. 
&is wife told him Rosy had been talking queerly 
all the afternoon. She had given her a dose of 
castor oil, she said, the thing she always gave the 
children. She did not know that this time it 
was the worst, instead of the best thing she could 
have done. 

Mrs. Bill brought the hot water to Sidney with 
the air of rendering distinguished service. 

“Have you a clean sheet?” asked Sidney. 

“Yes, miss.” 

. “Bring it, please. We must make things as 
nice as we can for the doctor.” 

Just then they heard steps, and to Sidney’s sur- 
prise, Jack Ridgefield’s form filled the line of light 
that shone out of the door. 

Bill turned in his chair. 

“It’s Mr. Ridgefield,” she said. 

He got up, and his wife retired quickly to a back 
room. Mrs. Bill never met Jack if she could 
avoid it. 

“I’ve brought some medicine,” Jack said, hand- 


7 6 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

ing a bottle to Sidney. “My wife says you can 
safely give it in any kind of fever. The instruc- 
tions are on the bottle. If you need anything 
more she has a medicine chest.” 

He turned to Bill. 

“Tony Hand has ridden to Whakapara to tele- 
phone for a doctor.” Bill mumbled something in- 
tended to be thanks. 

“Is there anything I can do?” Jack turned to 
Sidney again. 

“I’m afraid not,” she answered. 

“If there is, you’ll let me kngw?” 

“I will.” 

She wondered after he had gone if that quiet 
little Sophie had made him come. 

She called Mrs. Hardy back. 

“I want you to help me to wash her,” she said. 

The two women hung over the now unconscious 
child. Sidney was too preoccupied w T ith the un- 
pleasant job to consider the dramatic aspects of 
her association in such a way with a woman like 
Mrs. Bill. She felt only it would be dreadful for 
a doctor to find the child in the state it was in. 
Mrs. Bill, now thoroughly alarmed and subdued 
by her manner, did her best to help. She had the 
wisdom to keep quiet. 

At last the child was comparatively clean, and 
lay between a clean sheet. 'When she had given 
it a dose of the medicine Sidney knew there was 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 77 

nothing more she could do for it. She wondered 
if she should stay. She sat down on a wooden 
chair near the door to wait a little while. But 
she began to feel very uncomfortable. 

She saw that nothing she had ever learned out 
of books would help her here. She looked at 
Bill huddled up beside the window, and at Mrs. 
Bill leaning over the cot. She knew she had only 
one means of communication with these people — 
she could only order them about. She did not 
know how to talk to them, how to comfort them. 
She did not know whether they wanted to be 
talked to or comforted. Her utter ignorance of 
a human situation like this humiliated her. 

And yet, out of all the village, she was the one 
person they had appealed to. She felt she must 
stay. 

At half past ten the night began to grow cooler. 
But Sidney kept the door open, even though some- 
thing in the stillness outside worked upon her 
nerves. The house was not far from the creek, 
and there was a good deal of swampy land beyond 
it. It began to be filled with invisible presences. 
She knew she would not have gone out at that 
moment and crossed it for anything in the world. 
She looked at the cot and began to be afraid. 

She had never seen anything, not even an ani- 
mal die. She wished the sick child would move or 


78 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

moan or give some other sign of iife. But Rosy 
lay exceedingly still. 

The strain of inaction had just reached snap- 
ping point with her when Mrs. Bill called sharply: 

“Oh, miss, please!” 

Sidney jumped, and she and Bill hurried to 
the cot. 

Poor Rosy opened her eyes with a glassy stare, 
seeing no one, and then stiffened and turned grey. 

They all stared stupidly at the body for a min- 
ute. 

Then with a feeling of horror Sidney forced 
herself to put her hand on the dead child’s fore- 
head. She knew instinctively it was the end. 

“She’s gone,” she mumbled. “We can’t do any 
more.” 

Mrs. Bill gave a wail like an animal. 

Utterly overwhelmed by the shock of death and 
ashamed of her helplessness Sidney turned quickly 
out into the night and left them. 

Blindly she stumbled on past the stables, across 
the tramway, and so to her own house. But she 
could not go in. She was afraid of the black- 
ness inside it. She sat down on a log and stared 
up at the stars. She felt as if she had swelled 
enormously, she was so full of emotions that 
stretched her very skin. 

The stillness of the village startled her. How 
could people sleep while there was such a thing as 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 79 

death in their midst? And yet there they were, 
all peacefully oblivious of it. This extraordinary- 
spectacle of humanity’s indifference to humanity’s 
greatest calamity staggered her. In her first con- 
tact with it she felt death to be so terrible a thing 
that it must needs stir people out of sleep. 

So far she had never had an emotion that she 
could not easily control. Her parents had died 
when she was too young to miss them. An indul- 
gent aunt and uncle had brought her up in pleas- 
ant easy paths. She had never had anything to 
worry her deeply. No one she had known inti- 
mately had died since she had grown up. 

She saw now that this was extraordinary. And 
she was capable of depths of emotion out of all 
proportion to the significance in the scheme of 
things of so commonplace a thing as death. Rosy’s 
end was but one pathetic bit of waste out of mil- 
lions of discarded ends, but to Sidney it was the 
revelation of the end of herself, and of everything 
she loved. 

She sat out till she was chilled. Starting at 
every sound she got to bed feeling she could never 
be light-hearted any more. She did not fall asleep 
till the dawn broke. 

At half past seven she dressed and went to tell 
Jack Ridgefield. He was lighting his kitchen fire. 

“The child’s dead,” she said solemnly, as he 
came to the door. “It died at eleven last night.” 


8o THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 


“Lucky for it, poor little devil,” he said. 

Then he saw he had shocked her. 

“What on earth had she to live for?” he asked. 

“It’s not that,” she gasped. “It’s death,” and 
feeling he would not understand, she turned 
quickly away. 

Nor were the Mackenzies startled by Rosy’s 
death. 

“What a blessing!” said Mrs. Tom, when Sid- 
ney told her. 


CHAPTER IX 


But it took Sidney days to shake off her pre- 
occupation with Rosy’s death. She forced her- 
self to go to the Hardys’ on the Sunday, not 
knowing what on earth she could say to them. 
She was disgusted with herself for being unequal 
to the situation. She had always supposed she 
would be able to cope with any situation life 
brought to her. 

She was wise enough to see that the Hardys 
needed to be told what to do rather than what to 
feel, and she gave Mrs. Bill some good advice 
about nursing to distract her attention. The 
doctor arrived that morning to give the death 
certificate, and besides him and Jack Ridgefield 
Sidney was the only person to go near the house. 
Sophie told her afterwards that she had wished 
to go, but that her husband would not let her. 

The whole place heard that Sidney had been, 
and regarded her as a saint for so doing. They 
hoped Mrs. Bill would not trade upon her good 
nature as a result, and voiced their fears freely. 
But their prophecies were not fulfilled. Sidney 
never had any trouble with Mrs. Bill. 

81 


82 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

After this, seeing that she might be needed, 
and glad of something else to think about, Sidney 
was determined to add to her knowledge of ill- 
ness and accident, and sent to doctors and nurses 
she knew for books. For a time she had a notion 
that she would start a first-aid course in the vil- 
lage. But when she mentioned it casually to Jack 
he threw so much cold water on the scheme that 
she gave it up. 

It surprised Sidney that no one in the place 
seemed to worry about death. She learned there 
were occasionally bad accidents in the bush that 
put the place under a cloud of solemnity for a few 
hours, but otherwise no one was concerned with 
it. In talking to Mrs. Mackenzie she found out 
that that calm little woman had seen a dozen 
people die, and appeared to think nothing of it. 
Of course people died, she said. 

But Sidney walked for hours back and forth in 
the gully moralizing as she never had before. 

The next Saturday afternoon she went to the 
store for some candles. It always amused her to 
go, for the store was a cosmopolitan place, and 
she was likely to see there men from all parts of 
the Puhipuhi. Jack had once suggested that she 
give himself or Bob Lindsay a list of the things 
she needed so that they could save her the experi- 
ence of being stared at. But Sidney was deter- 
mined that she would not be kept in cotton wool 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 83 

that way. Much as she admired Jack Ridgefield, 
she was not going to let him dictate to her as to 
where she should go about the place. She had 
recognised his right to forbid women going into 
the mill, but the store was a public place, and she 
meant to go there. 

It was built beside the tramway close to the 
mill, and on the side nearest the main houses. 
Outsiders reached it by a road running between 
the timber yard and the first line of cottages. Sid- 
ney could never see anyone pass along this road 
because it was hidden from her by the school and 
timber stacks. 

As she neared the store she was surprised to see 
tethered to one of the hitching posts a fine bay 
horse, well groomed and saddled, guarded by two 
splendid game dogs. As she had seen nothing 
like them there before she wondered who the 
rider was. 

She was somewhat prepared, therefore, for the 
sight of a stranger. But the back of the man 
she did see the minute she stepped inside was so 
much of an apparition that she stopped and looked 
inquiringly at Bob Lindsay’s assistant who was 
talking across the counter to him. 

The spectacle of an English riding suit com- 
plete with fine boots and a silver-headed crop 
was even more than the horse and dogs had sug- 


84 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

gested. The wearer happened at that moment 
to be the only customer. 

Seeing that someone had come in, he turned. 
His tweed cap came swiftly off his dark head, and 
his brown eyes lit up with flattering interest. 

“Miss Carey, Mr. Devereux,” said Bob Lind- 
say from his desk. 

“Oh, I’ve heard of you,” he said, taking her 
hand, which went out impulsively. But he did not 
say when or where. 

“Of course,” she said ruefully. “Everybody 
has. I wish there might be somebody who 
hadn’t.” 

“As bad as that?” he asked, instantly compre- 
hending the nature of her complaint. 

“Yes. It’s awful to be one of the village sights. 
I can see the strangers nudged as I go by, and 
hear the whisper ‘The teacher.’ ” 

“Yes, that’s pretty bad,” he agreed. “I doubt 
if too much public inspection is good for the soul. 
Getting into the window bleaches the colour out 
of one. But you like the place?” 

“Oh, yes, I love the place. And I have dis- 
covered the wind.” 

“Ah, that is something of a discovery, isn’t it?” 
His eyes lit up charmingly. “I’ve never been able 
to live without the wind. It has a wonderful ef- 
fect upon the mind, once you have realized it. 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 85 

Have you found that you always want to face it?” 

“Why, yes, I believe so,” she smiled. 

“And if you turn your back on it you catch 
cold. It’s a synonym for life. That’s why it is 
so intoxicating.” 

For a minute they stood looking at each other, 
oblivious of Bob and his assistant. 

“Where have you dropped from?” she asked 
impertinently. 

“Why, I belong to the place. But I have been 
away all the summer. You haven’t heard of me? 
And I flattered myself I was a celebrity! What’s 
the matter with my friends?” and he glared at 
Bob. 

It was true. Nobody had mentioned him to 
her. 

“Well, you see,” she explained, “I’m only sup- 
posed to be interested in parents — to have official 
affiliations merely. If you were a parent I should 
have heard of you.” 

“Distressing limitation,” he exclaimed. “I’m 
not a parent. Does that cast me into the outer 
darkness? Is there no hope for the future?” 

Sidney laughed gaily. She thought him exceed- 
ingly diverting. 

“The future is the special perquisite of the 
hopeful,” she replied. 

“Then here’s one man who commandeers the 
future,” he retorted. 


86 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

They had to stand aside to let three men get 
to the counter. At once Arthur Devereux held 
out his hand to her. 

“I shall see you again soon,” he said, dropping 
his voice a little, and then, turning to take the 
package of things he had bought, he nodded to 
Bob and went out. 

Sobering instantly Sidney turned to him to 
order her candles. 

“He’s a great chap,” Bob began, divining her 
interest. 

And she answered at once lightly, “How funny 
to see that kind of a get-up here!” 

“Yes. I thought he was awfully affected at 
first. But he isn’t a bit. He’s just like a kid. 
And he’s got a glorious voice. I must have him 
down soon so that you can hear him sing. Funny 
he likes to live alone. He has a little place back 
in the Puhipuhi. Grazes some cattle. And pros- 
pects for silver. Doesn’t do much. Must get 
money from home.” 

The stimulus of meeting Arthur Devereux ex- 
hilarated Sidney for some hours. She could not 
help thinking of his good looks, his fine athletic 
build, his rich speaking voice, his freshness and 
vitality. She was familiar with many of the types 
of wandering Englishmen who pursue mysterious 
ways through the colonies, but he was more than 
a cut above any she had met. In no sense was 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 87 

he going to seed as so many remittance men did. 
That is, if he were a remittance man. She won- 
dered what explanation would explain him. 

She was amused that anyone like him should 
have turned up in the Puhipuhi, and she began to 
look forward to seeing him again. 


CHAPTER X 


In the middle of the next week Sidney received 
a note from Mana, brought by one of her chil- 
dren to school. 

“Dear Miss Carey — I am hoping you can visit 
us on Saturday.” 

Sidney was glad to look forward to it. 

As she looked down upon the Joyous Valley 
she forgot all disagreeable things. The little 
farm laughed in the sunlight, and she had a feel- 
ing of great contentment as she looked at it. 
Other people were enjoying it too. She heard 
the children screeching down by the creek, and a 
man’s deeper voice joining in. She wondered if 
it were their father. 

Presently she heard splashing, and knew they 
were bathing in the pool near the house. As she 
strolled on she saw emerge from a clump of 
bushes first the three tawny bodies of Mana’s 
children, all in short cotton pants, and then a, 
tall white figure in sporting trunks. To her sur- 
prise she recognised the dark head of Arthur 
88 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 89 

Devereux. She stopped on the path to let them 
keep well ahead of her. 

The children began to run towards a shed at 
the back of the house, and he followed, chasing 
them. The sun glistened on their lithe wet bodies. 
To Sidney it was a refreshingly healthy scene. 
She was instantly curious about Arthur Devereux’s 
presence there. She wondered if he had prompted 
Mana’s note. 

With her feelings indefinably intensified she 
walked on to the house. Mana met her at the 
door. 

“It’s always warm when you come,” she smiled. 

“I hope it always will be. I love warmth. I’m 
awfully glad to see you, Mana. I’ve been de- 
pressed since I was here last. You heard about 
Rosy Hardy’s death?” 

“Yes, a good thing, poor child.” 

“Why, Mana !” 

“A good thing, surely,” repeated Mana. 

“That’s what everybody says. But, you see, I 
had never seen anybody die before.” 

“Oh! That is different, yes. It is not pleas- 
ant to see people die, even if it may be pleasant to 
know they are dead.” 

Sidney looked curiously at her, smiling in her 
low chair. She looked herself like life incarnate. 

“It’s a pity more people do not die when they 


9 o THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

are young; people like Mrs. Bill, for instance/’ 
went on Mana. 

“Perhaps. I wasn’t thinking of the individual 
death. I was thinking of death. It is horrible.” 

“Why?” asked Mana. “Would you have us 
go on for ever just getting up every day and 
eating and sleeping? Very dull, I say.” 

Sidney smiled. “You are right. If we knew 
we should live for ever and that nothing could 
ever kill us how queer it would be. Nobody 
would ever do anything. The incentive to hurry 
up would be gone. The thought of death is 
hounding us all the time, somewhere down in our 
subconsciousness.” 

Mana looked as if she thoroughly understood, 
without ever being troubled by her understand- 
ing. 

Sidney wondered if she would mention Arthur 
Devereux before he appeared. But she did not. 
One of Mana’s fascinations was that while she 
had exquisite manners, she was ruled by no con- 
ventions whatsoever. She lived and moved by 
secret springs of her own. 

In a few minutes Arthur swung round the 
house, followed by the children, and entered as 
if he belonged there. He had on white flannel 
pants, a soft white shirt, and a navy flannel coat, 
and looked as if he were on an English tennis 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 91 

lawn. A considerable volume of life entered the 
room with him. 

“Hullo, Miss Carey. How d’you do? How 
charming that you know Mana ! Here, at least, 
you can be off the pedestal. Do you smoke?” 

He was stopped by a sh! from his hostess, 
who indicated her children with a glance. 

“How stupid of me, Miss Carey. Of course, 
you dc not smoke,” he corrected himself quickly. 

“Children,” said Mana, “you all go out and 
ask Rangi to give you a piece of cake, and to 
make us some tea. And then you go into the 
garden and pick teacher a big bunch of flowers, 
the best we have, and don’t come in till I call 
you.” 

“The deuce! I forgot they went to school,” 
said Arthur, after they had gone out. 

“They might talk,” said Mana. “They 
wouldn’t mean — — ” 

“Of course not. Then, Miss Carey, you do.” 
He extended his cigarette case. 

“I do,” she smiled, “but I don’t know how 
Mana knew it.” 

“I didn’t, but I thought you might be going 
to say yes.” 

Sidney smiled at her own dullness. 

Mana took a cigarette also, and Arthur lit 
them both. Then they all leaned back puffing 
happily. 


92 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

“Thank God, I am again among human Be- 
ings,” exclaimed Sidney. 

“Why, you do have a few of them at the mill,” 
said Arthur. “What about Jack Ridgefield? 
And Bob Lindsay’s a very human chap.” 

“Very,” smiled Sidney. “But you’ve mentioned 
only men. And they are both on my school com- 
mittee.” 

“I see,” his eyes twinkled. 

“Mr. Ridgefield is a wonderful man,” said 
Mana softly. 

“I don’t doubt it,” she answered. “He sub- 
dues even me. But he has one unfortunate charac- 
teristic. He has a passion for saving women from 
things. He would save us from our own feelings 
as he would save us from chopping wood or carry- 
ing water. He thinks we are too delicate and 
gentle to be allowed to feel. He just sees women 
as sweet young girls, or as dear old ladies in lace 
caps. He never sees us in the intermediate stage 
where we want to go adventuring with life.” 

“He’s young. He’ll get over that,” said 
Arthur. “He’s really a remarkable chap. It’s no 
bally joke managing the mill and the bush, hun- 
dreds of men, the tough nuts they are. And 
your labour laws have made them a pretty inde- 
pendent crowd. Democracy is a fine idea, but it’s 
a deucedly hard thing to work. No reverence for 
your position. You’ve got to beat them with your 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 93 

personality, and that’s a big job nowadays. But 
Jack has methods of his own. Bob Lindsay told 
me a great story about him the other day.” 

He paused to take a few puffs at his cigarette. 

“It seems that some two months ago Jack 
found some filthy language chalked up on the mill 
buildings. One day while the men were all at 
dinner in the kitchen he walked in with a black- 
board and an easel under his arm. He’ll prob- 
ably never let you see the men eating in the 
kitchen. It’s a sight. Bob happened to be there 
that day, as his wife was away in Whangarei. 
They keep the food very good. James Ridgefield 
often eats there when he’s up. Likes to be demo- 
cratic, you know. Well, everybody looked up 
when Jack walked in, and they had a suspicion 
something was up. Bob says there was a funny 
silence. Without a word Jack set up the black- 
board at the end of the room, and put a box 
of chalk on the table. Then he said he wanted 
to speak to them for a minute. He was very 
quiet, very courteous. He told them he had seen 
the language. He said he was sorry he had not 
foreseen that they would like to write that kind 
of thing, or he would have provided for it be- 
fore, but, as they knew, he had been pretty busy, 
and it was hard to think of everything. He said 
he thought for the sake of the women and chil- 
dren about the place it would be better if they 


94 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

would confine their writings to the blackboard. 
He hoped they would spend many pleasant even- 
ings with it. If there was anything else they 
could suggest that would add to their amusement, 
French postcards, for instance, he would see that 
they got it. Bob says not a man dare look at 
him. He waited a minute, and then said ‘Thank 
you, men,’ and went out. And not a word has 
been written about the mill since. What do you 
think of that, Miss Carey?” 

His eyes shone as he finished the story. 

And Sidney’s eyes shone too, and she was as 
much stirred by his appreciation of the incident 
as she was by Jack Ridgefield’s management of 
the situation. 

“I certainly think it took some courage to do 
that,” she cried. 

“More than that. An extraordinary self- 
possession. If he’d made a slip he would have 
been done. But Bob says those men were really 
ashamed, he made them feel so darned small. 
It’s a great gift.” 

“It certainly is,” she said, and leaned back in 
her chair thinking about it. 

Somebody called from the kitchen. 

“Ah, the tea,” said Mana rising. 

“Allow me,” Arthur said, springing to his feet. 
As he went out Sidney wondered how long he 
had known Mana. 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 95 

When he brought in the tray he stood to hand 
Sidney her cup and poured out his own as he 
liked it. 

They talked idly for a while of the bush and the 
kind of people to be found in it, and then they 
smoked again. 

“You will stay for the evening, won’t you, Miss 
Carey, and we will have some music?” said 
Mana. 

“Oh, may I? I’d love to.” 

“That will be nice. Now Mr. Devereux, you 
must entertain Miss Carey while I help to get 
the tea.” 

He jumped up. 

“Come on, Miss Carey. It is delightful now 
in the garden.” 

He led the way outside. 

He pointed out things as if the place belonged 
to him, but he had the subtle fascination of in- 
cluding her as a companion in a discovery. 

“How did you find Mana?” he asked frankly. 

“Why, she is a parent!” 

“To be sure,” he laughed. 

“I just came, and I could have fallen on her 
neck, I was so delighted to find her different from 
the mill women. But she would be different any- 
where, wouldn’t she?” 

“Indeed she would. Charming! You’ve heard 
her sing?” 


96 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

“Yes, rather. You sing, too, I believe?” 

“Yes. I’m fond of music.” 

Then the children saw them, and ran up with 
bunches of flowers. 

Sidney liked the way Arthur played with them. 
They called him “Uncle,” and showed no signs 
of shyness with him. She watched them all 
curiously, much attracted by his ability to amuse 
them. A man who is genuinely fond of children 
has a pass key to the hearts of many types of 
women. 

They stayed outside romping till Mana called 
them in. 

The “tea” was not the ordinary expurgated 
meal of those parts. Too often it had to be a 
rehash or an extension of the midday dinner, for 
there were no ice chests to delude the memory or 
elongate the distance between the pie and the pie 
end. But Mana’s tea was not an aftermath. It 
was a complete event. There was a whole cold 
chicken, and potatoes and corn, and junket and 
cream and grapes. 

“Please carve, Mr. Devereux,” she said. 

“With pleasure.” Arthur sat down at the head 
of the table. 

Mana’s companion, Rangi, sat with them. She 
was rather fat, and the most easily quiet person 
Sidney had ever met. As for herself and Arthur, 
they behaved absurdly. They egged each other 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 97 

on to tell ridiculous stories that convulsed Mana 
and the children. But when the meal was over 
and they turned into the front room Arthur 
changed the mood. 

“Look at that,” he said, going to the door, and 
nodding at the sunset. 

They all went on to the verandah to look at it. 
It was a startling sky splashed with a fan-shaped 
design of little blood red clouds. Lower down, 
there was a broad strip of bright pea green 
spotted with flakes of molten gold. They stood 
still watching the colours deepen and change and 
fade. 

Sidney said nothing, and Arthur was struck by 
her silence. He looked at her, admiring the lines 
of her figure, and the easy way she stood still. 

Mana sent the children to bed. They sat down 
on the verandah chairs. Arthur gave them ciga- 
rettes and filled a pipe for himself. They smoked 
for a while in a companionable silence. Then 
Mana went in to the piano and began to play 
and sing. 

When he had finished his pipe Arthur followed 
her, and Sidney sat out to watch the light fade 
from the sky. But at the first sound of his voice 
she stole in, went to the sofa, and sat so that she 
could look at him without being seen. 

In spite of what Bob had said she was no more 
prepared for his voice than she had been for 


9 b the passionate puritan 

Mana’s. He had one of the best trained and 
richest baritones she had heard. It stirred her as 
nothing had stirred her since she had heard such 
music last. He sang some popular concert songs, 
and then some old English and Irish ballads. 

Mana played his accompaniments perfectly, 
and had evidently learned his ways. Sidney 
watched them as she listened, vaguely jealous 
even then of the bond between them. She herself 
loved music, and understood it, but she played but 
little, and envied all women who could entertain 
as Mana could. 

She looked out once at the deepening dusk and 
wondered how she was going to get home. But 
she would not break that spell. They sang for a 
while in the dark till Arthur lit the candles, and 
then they continued, inspired by Sidney’s appre- 
ciation, which they felt without the medium of 
words. 

And she listened, feeling more alive than she 
had done for months. 

About half past nine they tired. 

“Well, that was quite a concert, Miss Carey,” 
said Mana, turning round on her stool. “I hope 
we have not tired you.” 

“Tired me !” she exclaimed, sitting up. Then 
she looked at Arthur. “You could be on the stage 
with that voice,” she said, her eyes shining. 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 99 

u IVe been told so,” he smiled. “Have a ciga- 
rette.” 

“No, thank you. I must get home now.” She 
stood up. 

“Oh, I’ll see you home, after a cigarette.” 

“Thank you. But you can’t £ome all that way.” 

“Of course I can. I’m riding. I’ve got my 
togs outside. Sit down.” 

She sat down, quite willing to be managed. 

They smoked and talked for another half hour, 
and then Sidney said she really must go. 

Arthur went out to change his clothes and 
saddle his horse. 

“You have given me a treat,” said Sidney, with 
enthusiasm. “What a delightful man!” 

“Very,” said Mana, with equally frank en- 
thusiasm. 

She knew how to be disconcertingly brief. 

Sidney knew how to hide her curiosity. She 
turned easily to talk of the pleasure she expected 
to get out of the organ, which, though small, had 
a good tone. 

“I shall love playing it at night in that empty 
schoolroom,” she said. 

Mana’s eyes glowed in company. 

Then Arthur called from outside. 

He stood by his horse’s head. 

“Can you ride, Miss Carey?” 

“Yes, I can.” 


100 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 


“You get up, then.” 

“Why, what are you going to do?” 

“Walk beside you, of course.” 

She laughed, knowing he would have his way. 

“You’d better have a lantern,” said Mana. 

“We don’t need it, thanks. It’s a clear night.” 

Sidney jumped lightly into the saddle, despising 
his assistance. She felt absurdly glad that she 
could ride. They set off forgetting the flowers. 

Mana thought of them as she re-entered the 
house, and ran into the kitchen for them, and 
then, thinking they would be a bother to carry, she 
looked at them sadly, and left them where they 
were. 

Arthur walked up Mana’s road holding on to 
a saddle strap. 

“How far are you from here?” Sidney asked, 
when they had cleared the garden. 

“A good four miles. Over in Ridgefield’s coun- 
try. There’s a bush camp about a mile from me, 
and I’m not far from one of the big dams. Have 
you seen a tripping yet?” 

“No. I believe they had one the week I opened 
school.” 

“They’re due to have another soon. I hope 
you can see it. Close the school, anyway, and I’ll 
come down for you.” 

Sidney laughed suddenly. 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN ioi 

“My dear man, I can’t do that kind of thing! 
I’m a civil servant!” 

“Oh, Lord!” he grumbled, with a comical dis- 
appointment that was very flattering. 

“Well, I can’t,” she repeated. “But tell me 
about it.’ 

He gave her a vivid picture of the system as 
they went up the ridge. Then, at the top, he 
pulled the horse to a standstill. 

“The stars are wonderful to-night,” he said, 
throwing up his head. 

In the blue-black velvet sky every southern con- 
stellation was brilliantly outlined, and every star 
seemed to be a magnetic point aimed to draw 
puny human beings off the earth. Sidney had a 
curious feeling that if she continued to look she 
would be sucked up off the horse. 

She stole a look at Arthur, standing hatless, his 
face upturned. She saw he had forgotten her, and 
because he had she became more vividly conscious 
of him, and the excitement of being out there in 
the night with an unknown man. 

“Well,” he said regretfully, after a while, “I 
suppose we must go on. Have you ever had a 
clear view from this ridge in the daytime?” 

“I have. It is glorious.” 

“Mana chose a charming spot. She’s rare, 
isn’t she?” 

“Indeed she is,” she answered warmly. “I won- 


102 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

der if you have the feeling I have about her some- 
times. I keep being surprised at her charm and 
her understanding. If she were a white woman 
I should have no such feeling. I’d take her all for 
granted.” 

“I know. It’s our damned Anglo-Saxon as- 
sumption that we are superior to everything with 
a dark skin. We can’t help it. It’s subconscious. 
We Englishmen feel the same thing when we go 
out to India. We go to handle ‘the natives.’ 
They are defined in our minds as that and nothing 
more. It’s the same with the whole empire. But, 
by Jove, in India it brings one up with a round 
turn to look into the eyes of some of those fel- 
lows. You’d give your soul to know what they 
are thinking about. It is something so much more 
complex than the things we dream of. And when 
it comes to power of will, and nervous and physi- 
cal endurance, why we can’t touch them. But just 
because we are ahead of them in organizing power 
and in devising quicker ways of killing we think 
we are superior.” 

Sidney was impressed by his understanding of 
her thought. 

“And yet we can rule them,” she said. 

“Yes, we can rule them, because we begin by 
letting them think we are going to teach them a 
new way of ruling themselves. And we can go 
a long way on that bluff. And when they find 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 103 

us out they have also learned that we are the least 
of two evils — ourselves or someone else. Their 
insight into that fact is the power behind the Brit- 
ish Empire.” 

He went on to talk to her of India, where he 
had spent two years. She asked the kind of ques- 
tion that spurred him to talk. She hardly noticed 
the distance, and was astonished when they 
reached the mill tramway. The reflection of the 
waste fire had guided him in turning off the main 
road. 

“Where do you turn in?” he asked. 

“By the back road. I’m one of the aristoc- 
racy,” she said with mock importance. 

“To be sure. I know it. You are next the 
Ridgefields. By the way, have you seen his wife? 
It was like him to do it like that, wasn’t it?” 

“I don’t know. I don’t pretend to understand 
him. Yes, I’ve seen her. She is a quiet, but at- 
tractive little thing. Very feminine. But I shall 
not be surprised to find her more liberal in ways 
than he is.” She went on to give a description of 
Sophie. 

They arrived at the gate that Jack had put 
across the back road with a sign saying it was 
private. 

Arthur stopped and looked over at her house. 

“Do you like living alone?” he asked. 


io 4 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

“Well, it’s a new experience. But it’s the only 
way I could live here.” 

He gave her his hand to dismount. She won- 
dered if she should ask him to come on and have 
something to drink. He had walked fast, and 
was hot and dusty. 

But he jumped straight into his saddle and 
held out his hand. 

“Good night, Miss Carey. Awfully nice to 
have you to talk to. We must have these eve- 
nings often.” 

“Good night. Awfully good of you to come 
all this way.” 

“Don’t mention it.” 

Swinging his horse he rode off. She turned 
round the end of the gate, for there was no fence, 
and walked slowly towards her house. 

She wondered why she could not sleep. But, 
she reflected, she had always been like that. If 
she enjoyed herself, she became blazingly alive. 
If she went to a theatre or a concert it was al- 
ways the same. She lay awake for hours hot and 
restless. 


CHAPTER XI 


“It’s eleven o’clock. Jack ought to be showing 
up any minute now.” 

James Ridgefield spoke the words to a group 
of people who stood with him by the face of the 
Big Dam. 

It was Saturday morning two weeks after Sid- 
ney’s last visit to Mana. The final tripping of 
the autumn was to come off that morning. James 
Ridgefield had arrived the day before from Auck- 
land bringing friends and tourists especially to 
see it. Sidney, who now had her horse and saddle, 
had ridden with two of the men, and stood be- 
side him, smart in her new habit. Mrs. Jack stood 
with her, glad to know someone in the group of 
strangers. Their horses and vehicles were hitched 
behind a group of camp buildings a chain or two 
away.* 

James Ridgefield had explained the “system,” 
and properly screwed up the feelings of his audi- 
ence. Now was added the touch of suspensive 
delay needed to put them on the highest height 
of excited expectancy. For, of course, nothing 
could happen without Jack. 

105 


10 6 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

He was working his way up the fifteen miles 
of creek from the mill, tripping dam after dam 
as he came. The Big Dam was the last in a chain 
of operations, and the way had to be prepared 
for it. The tripping had really begun two hours 
before. But the Big Dam was the chief glory of 
the spectacle. It was twice as large as its near- 
est rival there, and was easily the largest in New 
Zealand. It had taken twelve months to build. 
It was a quarter of a mile across, fifty feet high 
in the bed of the creek, and backed up a tem- 
porary narrow lake two miles long, and in places 
half a mile wide. 

This lake, now a jam of logs, containing four 
million feet of timber, seemed to take up the 
whole of the valley in which it lay. Leading 
through the bush, over the ridges all round it 
were the wooden tramways and roads that fed it. 

The valley itself was picturesque in a ragged 
desolate sort of way. It had been swept by fire 
many times, and was mostly a graveyard of skele- 
ton trees. Everywhere the fern and scrub had 
rapidly covered up the ashes. 

James Ridgefield was beginning to grow im- 
patient when he spied three men riding fast round 
a bend at the lower end of the gully. 

“Here they come at last,” he said. 

The sightseers eagerly watched the horsemen, 
and a gang of bush workers carrying long spiked 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 107 

poles set off from the camp down the dry bed of 
the creek to meet them. 

When they came up to each other they paused 
while Jack gave some final instructions. Then, as 
the three men came on Sidney recognised Arthur 
Devereux as one of them. She had wondered 
why he was not already on the scene, feeling sure 
he must have heard of the event. The third man 
was Bob Lindsay. 

“How’s she going?” called James Ridgefield, 
as they came clattering up. 

“Fine,” replied his son. And they passed on 
to the camp. 

Arthur Devereux was the first to reappear. 

“Hullo, Ridgefield,” he called as he strode over 
the stony ground. 

“Hullo, Devereux. I wondered where you had 
got to.” 

And then began general introductions. When 
they were over Arthur stepped back to Sidney. 

“I went down for you,” he said, lowering his 
voice. “We could have ridden up the creek with 
Jack and watched the other dams go. I’ve seen 
two off already.” 

“Oh, dear. But how was I to know you meant 
to do that? And besides, I should have had to 
come with Mr. Ridgefield’s party, as he asked me 
days ago.” 

But she was pleased he had thought of her, and 


108 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

her spirits grew even more elated than the glori- 
ous morning and the ride had already made them. 

Arthur turned to Mrs. Jack. 

“Your husband’s a wonder,” he began, with the 
frank admiration of other people’s achievements 
that was one of his charms. “Look at that dam 
for a piece of work.” 

Everybody stopped talking and looked at it. 
Little Mrs. Jack blushed at being thus hurled into 
the limelight. 

“How could he know the angle to give that 
face to make it resist the pressure of all that 
water?” 

Having it thus pointed out to them the visitors 
stared intently at the face of the dam, and at the 
enormous timbers that propped up its underside. 
And they knew it was a job to be proud of. 

Just then Jack Ridgefield came along with Bob 
Lindsay and another gang of men with pike poles. 
The group gazed deferentially at him, as a man 
clothed with mysterious attributes of power. But 
the hero of the day wore a very unassuming air, 
and was quite indifferent to the homage of his 
father’s friends. 

“Are we all right here?” asked James Ridge- 
field, while everybody hoped Jack would stop to 
talk. 

“Yes, all right,” he answered, passing by, and 
seeing no one but his wife. 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 109 

The group stood on a mound on the steep side 
of the creek. Here the gully rose so suddenly 
that they were near the gate, which was the centre 
of operations. It was on the other side that the 
dam stretched over lower ground for a quarter of 
a mile. 

Jack and his men went on to a footbridge that 
ran the whole way across the top, the latter going 
right over while he and Bob stayed above the 
gate. Workers who had been poling logs into 
the centre of the lake now made their way back 
to the shore, jumping from log to log, and giving 
a final push to the one they landed from. 

It was a clear morning, and the valley was very 
still. There was no sound of bush work, for 
every man had been taken off to stand by the 
creek to prevent jams at the numerous bends all 
the way down to the mill. 

The visitors looked upon the lake ruffled only 
by the movements of a few rolling logs in the 
great pack, and upon the dry bed of the creek 
below, and wondered when the fun would start. 

Suddenly the clear air was cut by the exciting 
sounds of horns blowing a series of signals far 
dow T n the gullies. The echoes ran round and 
died away. And then there rang out one long 
clear call, followed by three short ones. 

“Get your cameras ready,” said James Ridge- 
field unnecessarily to the tourists. 


no THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

Sidney was so thrilled that her throat swelled. 
She wanted to seize the hand of Arthur Devereux, 
who stood beside her with his hat off and his face 
tense. She knew he was feeling about it as she 
was. 

Jack Ridgefield turned on the footbridge, gave 
one look to see that no man was left on the logs, 
called to the men and was answered, and then 
waved his hand at his father with a funny little 
dramatic sweep very unlike him. 

“Away she goes,” he called. 

The watchers stiffened. They saw him lean 
down, pick up a rope and pull it. 

And there was no more peace in the valley that 
day. 

On the lower side the great gate heaved up 
over the first rush of water that was churned in- 
stantly to foam upon the rocks. In a minute the 
dry creek became a raging torrent, filling the val- 
ley with its roar. Then in the dam there was 
created an enormous suction that drew the logs 
from all sides. They came slowly at first, till 
caught by the undertow they rose up like prehis- 
toric water monsters coming up to breathe. They 
stood on end, poised for a fraction of a minute, 
and then they dived head first down at the founda- 
tions of the dam, hitting the gate upwards with 
a deafening boom that echoed round the hills. 
Clearing the gate they leapt up out of the w r ater 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN hi 

below it, thundered back upon the rocks, stag- 
gered, were swept onwards, hoisted one upon 
another, and swirled off again in a torture of 
movements that it worried the eye to follow. To 
the boom of the logs hitting the gate was now 
added an extraordinary thud, thud, thud, as they 
bounded from the rocks in the bed of the creek on 
their mad way to the mill. 

For ten minutes the visitors stood spellbound. 

James Ridgefield had tried to yell an explana- 
tion or two, but had to give it up. Nobody could 
hear him. Jack and Bob came off the footbridge 
and stood near them. 

“How long will this go on?” one man screamed 
into James Ridgefield’s ear. 

“All day,” he yelled back. 

Magnetized, the visitors stood and would have 
continued to stand. But there were other things 
to be seen. They were to follow the logs part of 
the way to the mill, in many cases to get ahead 
of them. The creek wound so that it was possible 
to leave the Big Dam half an hour after it had 
been tripped, and by following a straight track to 
beat the logs to the second dam, to watch them 
go through it, and so on most of the way down. 

Presently James Ridgefield beckoned to his 
party to follow him. They went back to the 
horses, leaving Jack and Bob by the dam. 


1 12 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

Sidney, Arthur Devereux and two other riders 
set off together. 

“Stop at Watson’s Bend, Devereux; that’s the 
best place,” called Jack after them. 

When they had ridden fast some distance over 
ridges and gullies they pulled up beside a dry 
creek bed. 

“We’ll see it turn splendidly here,” said 
Arthur. 

“Why?” exclaimed Sidney, “is this the creek?” 

“Yes. The water hasn’t got here yet. Seems 
funny, doesn’t it? We’d better tie our horses up 
over there.” He indicated a safe spot. 

When they had fastened their animals securely 
they walked back to the bank. Through some 
straggly trees they could see a group of men at 
the bend, waiting also. 

In a few minutes they felt rather than heard a 
peculiar beating on the air, a pulsing something, 
vibrating like the panting of a fast advancing 
monster. Then they distinguished a dull roar 
with a distinct intermittent booming in it — a roar 
that grew into a more exciting crescendo than any 
ever imagined in the brain of a gloriously mad 
musician. It came on and on, like a march of 
fate, a pulverizing roar grounding into nothing- 
ness every sensaton but that of sound. 

It was the weirdest thing Sidney had ever 
heard. She was so lost in it that she did not 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 113 

notice the arrival of the rest of the party till they 
were out of the vehicles and there beside them. 

“This is a bit near,” said James Ridgefield. 
“The water will be over the banks here.” 

They all moved back a little. 

Now they began to see things heaving up and 
down among the trees above the bend. Above 
the roar and the booming they heard the churn- 
ing of the water on the rocks. 

All at once, on round the bend it came, a dirty 
frothing wave ten to twelve feet high, sweeping 
over the banks on either side, levelling the fern, 
and on the crest of it, swirled as if they were 
matches, tossed the tangle of logs. The water 
came on like a wall. One could have run a yard 
or two ahead of it without being wet. 

When it had raged by and was gone beyond 
the next bend, James Ridgefield called his party 
together again. He told them there was a fall of 
seventy feet half a mile or so away by a track, 
that they could neither ride nor drive to be in 
time, that they would have to run for it, and that 
weak hearts had better miss it and be driven to 
the lunch rendezvous by the road. He was leav- 
ing drivers for the purpose. 

But laughing they all set off like a lot of chil- 
dren to follow him. It was rough underfoot, but 
otherwise the track was open. Now and again 
they could hear the logs booming their way down 


1 1 4 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

the creek ahead of them. Then they would lose 
the sound to pick it up somewhere behind. And 
so it zigzagged about them as they scrambled on. 

Mrs. Jack and Sidney and Arthur Devereux 
ran together. Sidney had been a good runner in 
her childhood. The race intoxicated her, and did 
not tire her at all. It added to her excitement to 
know that Arthur kept looking at her as they 
ran. 

A shallow stream threatened to hold up the 
party. One of the women looked at it and gasped. 
James Ridgefield settled the matter by catching 
her up in his arms. 

“Go ahead, gentlemen,” he laughed. “No 
time to argue.” 

Sidney splashed in at once leaving Arthur free 
to help Mrs. Jack. 

“Come on, Mrs. Ridgefield,” he smiled. 

She submitted gracefully, and on they went 
again as if they were running away from a fire. 

It was a dishevelled, panting, red-faced lot of 
people who broke from a bit of bush beside the 
fall, and saw to their everlasting satisfaction that 
they were on time. Nothing but a feeble trickle 
was dropping into the pool below. 

They followed their leader down and on to a 
hillock where they had a splendid view of every- 
thing. Here, under a fine puriri tree baskets of 
lunch awaited them — a delectable spectacle to the 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 115 

exhausted and hungry runners, who dropped on 
the ground and began to mop their faces. 

To Sidney’s surprise Jack Ridgefield and Bob 
Lindsay came towards them from a gang of 
polers by the pool. 

“Why,” she exclaimed, “how did you get 
here?” 

“We rode by an old track. It was a bit hard 
on the horses.” Jack threw himself down by his 
wife. He was glad of a spell. 

“That man is like the eye of God,” whispered 
Arthur to Sidney. “He is everywhere.” 

“Sh!” she whispered. “He’ll hear. Listen. 
It’s coming.” 

They all sat up. 

The great crescendo was bursting the valley 
again. It was as if the wrath of the gods was 
upon them, as if the accumulated roars of all the 
ages had been merged into one to split the ears of 
humanity. 

With their eyes fixed on the smooth rocks at 
the top of the fall they waited breathlessly. All 
at once the wall of water heaved up into the sky, 
curled and rushed downwards. The logs, turn- 
ing somersaults, leapt clear of it. Some of them 
dived head first into the pool to shoot up later, or 
be smothered under others coming down. Some 
among the first fell flat with an enormous splash. 
In a torment of motion they were swirled round 


ii 6 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

till the current caught them and carried them off 
once more down the creek. 

A gang of men poled vigorously from the 
banks, for this was a bad place for a jam. 

For a long time they watched, perceiving no 
diminution of the roar. 

Jack and his father consulted as to whether it 
were not too noisy for them to eat lunch where 
they were. But the tired visitors voted against 
change. So, with little conversation, they opened 
and ate the lunch prepared by the kitchen cook. 
At the end of another hour they could see no 
change in the tumult in the creek. 

They rested till the horses and vehicles were 
brought along, and then James Ridgefield started 
them off once more. 

This time Arthur and Sidney rode together. 

Farther down they came to one of the three 
dams they were to pass. The water had partly 
subsided as a lake, and the logs were sweeping 
through it on a current already made for them. 

They rode now to the accompaniment of con- 
tinuous sound, for the waters of the first tripping 
had long since reached the mill, and were creating 
a thunderous outside fall over the overflow and 
down the ravine. 

Sidney and Arthur rode mostly in a companion- 
able silence. They found each other easy from 
the beginning. 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 117 

At intervals he told her facts of the day’s work, 
that Jack expected to get between four and five 
million feet of timber down, that when it was 
over the logs would lie in an unbroken line up the 
bed of the creek for four miles, that it would 
take small trippings to bring the stragglers on, 
but that this combined flood would carry the mill 
for months, and that by such a system the place 
was independent of the weather. It had taken 
Jack and his father three years to work it out, 
he said. The older man had told what he wanted, 
and the son had seen that it was done. 

The day ended with a supper in the pavilion 
of the bowling green, prepared by Mrs. Mac- 
kenzie, Mrs. Lindsay and Mrs. Graham, who 
were flattered that James Ridgefield had asked 
them to do it. Also, they were secretly expectant, 
for he always made expensive presents to the 
wives of his men who obliged him in such cir- 
cumstances. 

Before Sidney went home she had had a chance 
to ask James Ridgefield the question she would 
never have asked anyone else in the place. 

They had walked away from the pavilion to 
look over the face of the mill dam at the cataract 
raging down the precipice. 

“Who is Arthur Devereux?” she said, with a 
frank curiosity. If he thought her interest sig- 
nificant he did not show it. 


1 1 8 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

“He’s an awfully decent chap, so far as I know. 
Came up here about eighteen months ago to 
shoot, liked it, took a place up in the hills, and 
stayed on. Nobody knows why. Probably no 
reason at all. He’s travelled a good deal. Prob- 
ably left England because he wanted some fresh 
air. I’ve met him at Government House in Auck- 
land. He’s stayed there. So he must be known 
to the Governor.” 

“He looks so funny up here,” she said lightly. 

“Yes. These Englishmen do get into unex- 
pected places. Eve learned that you can meet 
an Oxford accent all the way from a gumfield 
hut to a university.” 

She laughed. 

“How did the horse go?” he went on. 

“Oh, splendidly. Nice and easy.” 

“Good. You can’t beat a Maori pony for these 
parts. They are as surefooted as goats.” 

When she got into bed that night Sidney was 
too tired to review the day. But she was not too 
tired to realize that it had been the most interest- 
ing day in her life. She did not know whether 
Arthur Devereux had made it so, or whether the 
day had intensified her interest in him, and she 
was too sleepy to sort out her impressions or at- 
tempt a classification of her emotions. 

She dropped into a deep slumber with the dam 
overflow pounding like surf in her ears. 


CHAPTER XII 


“God! Did you ever see anything funnier in 
your life?” said Arthur Devereux, without mov- 
ing a muscle of his face. 

“I certainly never did,” Sidney agreed, making 
desperate efforts to control her amusement. 

They sat in a fern bower in a corner of the 
Whakapara hall, watching the dancers at a 
charity ball. 

A young and popular farmer had been killed 
by a fall from his horse, and the shocked com- 
munity had risen as one man to assist his young 
wife and two babies, who were left with little 
but mortgages and debts. Only too glad of a 
dramatic event that would draw everybody and 
make the occasion memorable the young people 
decided for a ball, easily persuading their elders. 
Something about a real ball, they knew, always 
stirred the single men to propose as the weekly 
dances never did. 

Every girl for ten miles around slaved to get 
the finest supper and produce the most lavish 
decorations the Whakapara hall had ever known. 
And, in truth, there was little wrong with either. 


120 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

The bare walls of the building were entirely 
hidden by ferns and greenery, which also fes- 
tooned out of sight a considerable part of the 
unsightly ceiling. The sitting-out bowers had 
received special attention, and were cunningly de- 
vised to obscure the vision of people without as 
to what was going on within. In a hard row all 
round the hall in front of them were the chairs 
designed for the chaperons and the middle-aged. 

Almost the entire thing was contributed. Only 
the Chinese lanterns and the programmes had to 
be paid for out of the proceeds. The committee 
at first fixed the price at five shillings, but wisely 
changed it to half a crown, so that whole families 
could afford to go. 

Everybody who had ever been at a ball, and a 
great many who had not, were there. At least 
fifty Ridgefield men went from the bush and the 
mill, many of them giving half a sovereign and 
refusing the change, for your bushman is a hu- 
man of generous instincts. They swelled the 
number of males to an exciting surplus. Every 
girl knew from the start there would be no wall 
flowers that night. This fact added considerably 
to their spirits and the general sparkle. 

Jack Ridgefield sent a cheque for twenty 
pounds, but did not go. Mr. and Mrs. Mac- 
kenzie did not dance, and Alec Graham’s wife was 
ill. So Bob Lindsay was, besides Sidney, the 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 121 


only member of the mill aristocracy present. He 
had willingly consented to contribute his talents 
as a piano player. There were, besides him, two 
violinists, both men from the mill, and a man 
from far back in the Puhipuhi who played the 
flute. To fill in, if necessary, there were two first- 
class accordeon artists. 

When Arthur Devereux asked Sidney to go 
with him for the fun of the thing, she accepted 
with childish delight. Her first thought was that 
it would be lovely to dance with him, for she was 
sure he was an expert. And her second was that 
it would amuse her to see how he fitted in to so 
incongruous an environment. 

It was now well on in the winter, and she had 
seen him many times since the tripping of the dam. 
Not only had they met at Mana’s, but they had 
met at the Lindsays’, and they had gone riding 
together on Sunday afternoons. She felt the keen- 
est enjoyment of his good company and his im- 
personal brotherliness. 

So far nothing about him had touched any- 
thing but her mind. And he had given no sign 
whatever that he regarded her as anything but 
pleasant company in a dull place. Sidney had 
gone along without asking herself any questions 
about the friendship, or seeing there was any 
reason for asking any. 

But now, as they sat together in the fern bower, 


122 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 


she felt her interest in him intensified, she knew 
not why. 

Arthur was not in full evening dress, as were 
many of the men present. He wore the orthodox 
white shirt and tie, but his suit was a square cut 
navy blue, and he looked much like a naval officer. 
As Sidney seldom saw him out of riding clothes, 
she was struck anew by his good looks, his fine 
fastidiousness, and his boyish charm. 

She, herself, was in semi-evening dress, in the 
colour that suited her best, a grey blue, that put 
deep shades into her eyes and brought out the 
colour in her cheeks. She wore a large salmon 
velvet rose at her belt, and no jewellery whatever. 
She had dressed her hair very carefully, so that 
it was perfectly balanced on her head. 

Arthur was intensely aware, as he sat beside 
her, of her distinction, her physical vitality, and 
the glory of her unpoisoned youth. He, too, got 
an entirely fresh impression as he watched her. 
But he was suspicious of impressions — he had had 
so many. Sidney baffled him a little. He had 
not yet been able to estimate how sophisticatecl 
she was. Somewhere down in his consciousness 
he knew he had asked her to-night to see if the 
evening would enlighten him. 

But for some time after the dancing started 
they were too much amused watching others to 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 123 

think of themselves. Never, indeed, had either of 
them been in such crude company. 

Arthur had provided against possible encroach- 
ments upon his partner. He had foreseen that 
some of her “parents” might presume that they 
could dance with her. So he and Bob Lindsay 
had filled her programme beforehand. Bob, as 
pianist, got only two dances, but he was delighted 
to get that out of the limited number that Sidney 
meant to dance, for she and Arthur left their 
bower only for the waltzes. 

It was the lancers they were watching from 
their corner when Arthur spoke. It was a pretty 
rough-and-tumble business as danced in the Wha- 
kapara hall. There were wild shrieks, the result 
of much clutching of the female by the male, and 
many retirements to the cloakroom to adjust un- 
steady garments. 

As he watched it he got all the wandering vibra- 
tions as he had at other balls more gilded and re- 
fined. He spoke his thoughts aloud. 

“Yes, it’s funny, as all balls are funny. But 
it’s the pretentiousness of it that makes it absurd. 
These programmes, for instance,” he looked at 
the gilt atrocity that hung by a cord from her 
arm. “What an affectation here! But apart 
from little things like that it is the universal ball.” 

She looked up at him. 


124 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

“Where did you dance last?” she asked curi- 
ously. 

“I guess it was in Auckland, at the Gover- 
nor’s,” he answered, as simply as he could. He 
detested the appearance of bragging. 

“Did you ever go to balls in Calcutta? I have 
read in novels that they were particularly glitter- 
ing.” 

“Yes, IVe been there. They are pretty gay, 
curiously exciting, an undercurrent of sex intrigue 
always about them. You know they mean liaisons 
and divorces and elopements and the hell of a 
row generally.” He smiled, pursuing some mem- 
ory of his own. 

She laughed, ignoring his retrospection. 

“What a contrast!” she said, looking out into 
the melee that kicked up the dust from the floor. 

“In ways, yes. The method’s different, cruder, 
but the fundamental thing is the same. There 
isn’t a single girl here who isn’t hoping she will 
get a love affair out of it, if she hasn’t got one 
already. And that’s the object of all balls.” 

“Really, I suppose that’s true,” she began, half 
laughing. 

Then suddenly she remembered that she was 
one of the single girls present, and she looked 
quickly away from him out into the final scramble 
of the lancers. She rarely blushed, but now she 
could not keep a quick heat from her face. 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 125 

He was not aware that he had said anything 
that could be taken personally till he saw the 
deepened colour on her cheeks. He had spoken 
lightly, thinking of the ways of nature in general. 
In a minute he saw that he had either suggested 
a possibility to her, or made her more aware of 
something she already suspected. 

But Arthur Devereux was an artist with a very 
delicate touch. It didn’t interest him to rush any- 
thing in the way of a human attraction. He 
knew well that once the climaxes were reached 
something alluring was gone for ever. 

So he went on talking lightly, and completely 
disabused her mind of any personal intent. 

“Of course it’s true. From the African bush- 
man upwards all dancing is sex dancing. By the 
way, that’s one thing the natives beat us hollow 
at. They are beautiful and artistic in their primi- 
tive ways. We are showy and vulgar and hypo- 
critical in our artificial ones. You have seen the 
Maori poi dance?” 

“Oh, yes,” she answered, recovering. 

“Well, compare it with that.” 

He nodded his head at the last disentanglement 
of the lancers. 

Mopping their faces, perspiring tanned men led 
their steaming and dishevelled partners to the 
bowers or the cloakroom. There was hardly a 
graceful pair in the whole crowd. If they were 


126 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

young and healthy they were crude. If they were 
middle-aged, they were stiff. Most of those who 
had lived and danced in what they would have 
called superior places were pretentious and ridic- 
ulous. 

Sidney, who had quite recovered her com- 
posure, agreed that the aboriginal in his un- 
ashamed simplicity was the superior. 

“It’s a waltz next,” said Arthur, examining 
her programme. “Let’s try it if there is not too 
much of a crush.” 

She agreed gaily. She was pining to get up. 

Seeing that they meant to dance at last, Bob 
Lindsay, who had glanced their way several times, 
chose “The Tales of Hoffman.” He had learned 
that Sidney thought it very seductive. 

And, indeed, it always stirred her profoundly. 
She vibrated to something in its sensuous rhythm, 
she had never asked why. She felt it was a de- 
lightful coincidence that it should begin her danc- 
ing acquaintance with Arthur Devereux. 

As she had foreseen, he danced perfectly, and 
she knew, with secret pride, that he could find 
no fault with her. As a dancing pair they were 
splendidly matched. Also, he held her in the 
good old-fashioned way, the way she liked to be 
held. She had never danced a second time with 
a man who made mistakes in the ballroom. She 
had always felt it was the poetry of motion one 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 127 

danced to achieve. She was furious with anyone 
who had not her sense of fitness, and who pro- 
jected personal attentions into it. 

Arthur Devereux appeared to forget her as he 
danced. She appeared to forget him. They each 
wondered if the other really did, and liked hav- 
ing to wonder. They were both more vividly 
alive when they went back to the bower. 

“That was good,” he said, sitting down beside 
her. “By Jove, I wish I had you where there 
was more room. I know I don’t have to tell you 
you’re a glorious dancer.” 

But it made her glow inside to hear him say it. 

He fanned her idly and made no attempt at 
flirtation. He had decided early in their acquaint-, 
ance that there was no fraction of a coquette 
about her. She was singularly lacking in one of 
civilized man’s greatest arts. 

They were now diverted by a youngish pair 
who came to sit on the chairs immediately in 
front of their bower. The newcomers were ob- 
viously jointly responsible for the two infants they 
carried. They were thin, gaunt, and saddened 
by overwork. But they had a determined air of 
having come out to enjoy themselves. They had 
not been to a ball since they were married. They 
each hoped to catch again a fleeting renewal of 
the glory of their courtship, which had begun and 
progressed in this same hall. They sat down, 


128 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 


hushed the babies, and gazed about them, look- 
ing for acquaintances. 

The woman had made pathetic attempts to 
dress up, but had only succeeded in looking ec- 
centric. The man had done better only because 
he was more limited. His idea of festivity was 
an enormous buttonhole. 

The parents had agreed beforehand to dance 
alternately, while the other held the twins. 

As they had sat down Arthur tapped Sidney 
lightly on the knee. “Look,” he whispered. 

For some minutes they watched silently, talking 
merely with their eyes, as the parents settled, 
and patted the babies off to sleep again. 

A farmer came up to them. 

“I see yer got ’ere, after all. What about a 
dance, missis? Will ee let yer?” He grinned 
at the husband. 

“You bet. It’ll be my turn next. If she don’t 
be’ave I won’t. No flirtin’ now.” 

And they all laughed foolishly. 

The father was left with a twin on each arm. 
For the next dance he found a partner, while the 
mother held the infants, who hardly resented the 
change. And so it went for several rounds. Then 
it came to the waltz that Sidney and Bob had to- 
gether. As they went off Arthur, who had said 
he would go out to smoke, noticed that the par- 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 129 

ents of the twins were sitting dejectedly together. 
Neither had found a partner. 

Arthur realized that they were not getting 
something they had come for, that their poor 
emotions were being sadly disappointed. An in- 
spiration struck him. He stuck his head through 
the bower, and touched the man on the shoulder. 

“Pardon me, but wouldn’t you two like to 
dance together?” he asked. “I’ll take the kids.” 

They looked round at him, astonished, and 
then delighted. 

“You’re very good, sir, but ” 

“No buts. They’ll be all right with me. 
There’s a kind of couch in here. Hand them 
over.” 

Grinning, they did so, and the amazing infants 
slept. 

Arthur did not know that Sidney and Bob saw 
the incident as they went by. He had not had his 
eye on the gallery. 

“Now that’s a Christian act,” said Bob warmly. 
“Only one man in a thousand would have given 
up a smoke to do that.” 

And Sidney felt he was right. Arthur’s action 
warmed and excited her. It coloured her feel- 
ing about him then and ever afterwards. 

“You are a brick!” she said, when she returned 
to him. “Don’t move them. We may as well 
keep them awhile if they are asleep.” 


130 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

i : As the twins filled half the couch there was 
room only for Sidney to sit comfortably. Arthur 
balanced himself on the low end of the sofa above 
her. The parents looked through, expecting to 
claim their offspring. 

“All right. Go ahead and dance some more,” 
said Arthur. “We are sitting out the next three. 
The kids are sound asleep.” 

The parents went off in great spirits. 

“Poor devils,” he whispered down to her. “At 
first I thought them merely funny. But they’re 
pathetic. They need to dance so badly.” 

She looked up eloquently at him, passionately 
admiring this simple bit of human kindness, and 
wondering why she was surprised that it should 
come from a man of the world. 

“You were going to smoke,”' she said. “Please 
go out now. Yes, please. I shan’t feel deserted. 
I really wish you to.” 

“Thanks. Then I will.” 

Alone in the bower with the twins she looked 
tenderly into their hot and ordinary little faces, 
aware that she had become absurdly emotional 
about babies. Plain though they were, they were 
the unconscious means of stirring something in 
Sidney that had never been stirred before. 

Arthur came back at the end of the dance. 

“It’s a wonderful night. How long do you 
want to stay?” 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 13 1 

“One more waltz. It will be suppertime, and 
there will be more room.” 

“That’s true. And we must have some supper. 
I looked in at it. It looks scrumptious.” 

She smiled. “Yes, you can always be sure of a 
wonderful meal in the backblocks, I believe. 
Everybody can cook. They can even create 
food.” 

They had their waltz, the best of the evening, 
and some of the cold chicken and ham and trifle. 
After saying good-bye to Bob they got their coats 
and started for the mill. 


CHAPTER XIII 


They had not ridden down because of the diffi- 
culty of changing clothes at the hall. They agreed 
it would be much more interesting to walk back 
to the top of the ridge above the drop, and brake 
themselves home on a truck to the mill. This 
was the usual way of getting home from Whaka- 
para at night when one did not ride. There were 
usually trucks left on the little siding for the pur- 
pose. This night there were several for the use 
of the first people who came along to claim them. 

Braking a truck was a simple business, Arthur 
said. He had often done it. 

A full moon filled the valley with light. The 
night was cool, but there was no sting in it. It 
had been a friendly winter, exceptionally warm. 
There w^as a heavy dew. 

Sidney and Arthur set out with a swing, glory- 
ing in it. It was about one o’clock, and as the 
dance was to last till four they were the first to 
leave. Even the bush workers would stay to the 
end and get back to go straight to work. But as 
it was a Saturday morning they did not mind. 
Men accustomed to fighting fires for fifty hours 
132 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 133 

on end thought nothing of giving up a night’s 
sleep for a dance. 

Before they had gone far Arthur took out his 
cigarettes. Sidney lit hers from a match in the 
hollow of his hand, and was conscious that his 
fingers touched her cheek. Then he filled and 
lit his pipe and they went on, speaking only when 
the spirit moved them. They did not go by way 
of the drop, but by the longer road zigzagging 
up the ridge. It was fringed with bush, and had 
beautiful outlooks upon the valley below. Now 
and again they stopped to look down. The night 
was so still that they could hear the music in the 
hall and the dancing feet. 

As they walked on Sidney pondered over the 
fact that Arthur Devereux never offered to assist 
her over obstacles. Every man she had ever 
known lost no chance of taking her arm or 
gripping her elbow, and assuming generally that 
she was a feeble creature. But he paid her the 
supreme compliment of recognising that she was 
a sure-footed sylph, as able as himself to jump 
ruts and dodge roots. 

As she had not yet reached the stage when she 
wanted excuses for physical contact with him, she 
was interested in his apparent lack of any desire 
to avail himself of his privileges as an escort. 
He never offered her his arm all the way up the 
long hill. And she was quite satisfied that he 


i 3 4 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

should enjoy her company, as he so obviously 
did. 

They took a cut into the tramway a little be- 
fore they reached the top, and when they broke 
from the bush at the crest of the hill they cried 
out together. One of the sights of a lifetime 
made the world a dream of magic about them. 

Every tree round the clearing, every foot of 
fern and trampled grass was veiled with diamond 
wheels that glittered in the moonlight. Millions 
of spiders’ webs caught by the dew shrouded them. 
It looked as if every spider in the country had 
gathered for a celebration, and as if the moon 
had collaborated to make it unforgettable. 

“God! What a sight,” said Arthur, half to 
himself, after a few minutes. “Incredible if one 
didn’t see it.” 

Though Sidney said nothing her silence spoke 
forcibly for her. 

He turned to her with the first bit of personal 
impulsiveness he had shown. 

“Do you know, little girl, it’s fine to have you 
like everything as I do.” 

The “little girl” took her by surprise and 
startled her into answering lightly, “Of course I 
enjoy everything.” 

However, she knew she was blushing again, 
and he knew it too. 

They stood a few minutes longer absorbing 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 135 

that fleeting beauty into their souls. Then they 
walked on to the trucks. 

The one nearest the mill happened to be small, 
with only room for two. Sidney grew excited as 
she thought of the ride. Arthur helped her to 
arrange herself so that she sat firmly. When he 
got on beside her they saw they would have to sit 
as closely as they could to each other to avoid 
having their clothes caught by the wheels. He 
tucked her cloak carefully under her legs. 

“Don’t let that flop over. If the wheel catches 
it you will be pulled off,” he said. 

He took the rope of the emergency brake in 
one hand, and pushed the other with his foot. 
As they were on the incline already they began 
to move without a push, and in a minute they 
were off. 

They gained speed as they went, and presently 
they were tearing through the night. Arthur put 
his left arm round Sidney and held her firmly 
against him. He did not look at her to see how 
she took it. His face was set, and his eyes keenly 
on the lookout, for a stone on the line would 
have wrecked them, and there was always the 
danger at night of a wandering pig or a cow. 

It was impossible for Sidney to tell how neces- 
sary it was for him to hold her, so she could not 
judge of the significance of his action. And she 
did not care to speculate about it. That strong 


1 36 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

arm round her back gave her a thrill above any- 
thing she had ever known. She wished it might 
last for ever, and that was all she cared to feel 
then. The excitement of racing like that through 
the dead of night, with the wind they made sting- 
ing their cheeks, and the clatter of their going 
disturbing the peace of the still valleys, made for 
her an experience that shook her right out of 
the accustomed smoothness of her ways. 

She hated that it should come to an end, which 
it did all too soon, for it took only ten minutes 
to do the two miles, even though the speed ac- 
quired on the slopes dissipated considerably on 
the flats. 

Arthur braked the truck to a standstill by the 
stables, where he had left his horse and clothes. 
At once he withdrew his arm from Sidney, 
stretched himself and jumped off. 

“Wasn’t that sport?” he asked gaily, giving 
her his hand. 

“Glorious,” she cried, looking frankly at him. 
“I have enjoyed it all. Thank you so much.” 

“Oh, I’ll see you safely to your gate,” he 
smiled. 

They walked along the track in silence, enjoy- 
ing the deep stillness of the village. 

It was an alluring night on the ghostly flat, and 
the stumps looked more reminiscent than ever as 
they raised their smooth tops to the moon. 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 137 

They iboth realized they did not want the eve- 
ning to end. When they stopped at her gate they 
had their first moment of hesitancy. But Arthur 
diagnosed it at once, and was not to be caught 
now by that kind of impulse. 

“Good night, Miss Carey. You’ve given me an 
awfully jolly evening. We’ll do it again.” 

She lightened at once. 

“I’ve just loved it,” she said warmly. “And I 
thank you.” 

For a few minutes after he had left her she 
wondered if he had enjoyed it all as much as she 
had, and if he had felt the same regret at the 
end. 

As she undressed she felt that in accordance 
with all her preconceived notions of the creature, 
Arthur Devereux was that greatly-to-be-desired 
rarity — a thorough gentleman. She approved of 
the whole evening, of the things he had left un- 
done even more than of the things he had done. 

She did not sleep for hours. For the first time 
in her life she indulged in the exciting pastime 
of projecting herself into a future made for two, 
and was amazed when the dawn stole in upon her 
visions. 

Arthur Devereux thought about her a good 
deal as he rode home. He told himself he must 
not drift into an affair with a girl of her type. 
He acknowledged that apart from delighting in 


138 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

her company he was becoming more and more 
stimulated by her physical attractions. He was 
not by any means a woman hunter, but when 
women turned up as she had done he could not 
help looking into the future. 

He was not yet in love with Sidney, and did 
not know whether he ever would be. He did 
not speculate about marriage as he rode. But 
his thoughts wandered far as he tried to decide 
how sophisticated she was. 

“I wonder if she ever would,” he said to him- 
self. 


CHAPTER XIV 


The next day Sidney began a critical investiga- 
tion of her feelings, and the situation generally. 
As she was not yet in love with Arthur she was 
able to think rationally about being in love with 
him. Though her vanity was pleased with his 
attention she had no illusions about mere atten- 
tions from men. She had always had their at- 
tention. She was clear-sighted enough to see that 
so far Arthur had given her no sign that he cared 
for more than her company. And she was proud 
enough and strong enough to keep her feelings 
down until she was sure what a man meant. 

In considering the subject of marriage she had 
always been very sure of what she wanted. She 
believed she would always be able to manage her 
feelings so that she would not fall in love with 
an undesirable man. She was not ignorant of the 
ways of men. She had read scientific sex books. 
She had been the confidante of friends who had 
been horribly disillusioned. And she was de- 
termined that she would never make the mistakes 
they made. She was sure she could trust her own 
judgment, and more, she was sure that if she 
139 


i 4 o THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

found herself deceived she could pull herself up 
and be glad she was saved in time. 

Sidney was tolerant of moral lapses in others. 
She had always said on hearing of them, “Well, 
I’m not dead yet myself,” but while lightly utter- 
ing that profundity she had always meant to keep 
clear of emotional messes. She was young enough 
and inexperienced enough to be sure she could 
not love a man who would not be faithful to her. 
That was her first requirement in a possible hus- 
band. Exactly how she was going to be sure of 
faithfulness she had never asked herself. She 
took it for granted she would be. 

Now, in considering Arthur, she realized she 
knew nothing whatever of his past, of his code 
about women, and she told herself very firmly 
that though his company was delightful, she could 
not allow herself to drift into anything serious 
with him until she did know more. 

Fortified by this analysis she met him coolly 
for their next ride, ready to frustrate any ad- 
vances he might make. But noticing some subtle 
difference in her, and fortified also by his own 
resolutions, Arthur was as impersonal as the 
merest acquaintance. 

Then Sidney went to Auckland for her winter 
vacation and in a week of mild dissipation almost 
forgot him. 

On her return she found a short note from him 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 141 

saying he hoped to meet her as usual the follow- 
ing Saturday afternoon. While they were riding 
away in the hills it began to rain. Arthur sug- 
gested they should make for his cottage, which he 
said was a mile or two away. 

Sidney looked round the sky, seeing it would 
not clear for hours, and answered lightly that she 
would get wet anyway and that the sooner she 
reached home the better. 

Arthur had not had any deliberate motive in 
making the suggestion; that is, he told himself he 
had not, but he wondered if she thought he had. 
He did not leave her to go home alone, but rode 
with her to their usual halting place on the road 
a mile away from the mill, and made light of 
getting wet. 

One soft night in the early spring Sidney rode 
out alone. 

Her horse was always kept in the stables or 
in a little field close by. She had never had to 
get it for herself, no matter when she wanted it, 
for Bill Hardy seemed to live, eat and sleep with 
the horses. He was now her devoted slave. He 
got her horse for her, and groomed it as if he 
were performing a religious rite. If he won- 
dered where she went on Saturday afternoons, or 
thought the nocturnal rides she now began to 
take were funny he kept his opinions to himself. 

From Bill Sidney learned all there was to know 


142 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

about horses. He could not talk of anything else, 
and when he talked of them his sad eyes glowed. 
She liked to think that life had given him this 
great compensation, and that between him and 
the animals he loved there was a real understand- 
ing. 

She was able to come and go to the stables un- 
noticed, as what she called her track to the tram- 
way was hidden from the village by the school 
and the timber stacks. She could be seen leaving 
her gate only by the Ridgefields, but the houses 
were so situated that they could not tell whether 
she went to the school or beyond it. 

She had never hesitated for a moment about 
going out with Arthur, but she was determined to 
keep her jaunts with him to herself. She could 
not have endured for a moment the kind of 
curiosity the village would have had about it, or 
the familiar banalities that the more privileged 
of her parents might have ventured upon the sub- 
ject. Indeed, with her own friends she would 
have been fiercely reticent. She had no fear that 
Bill would suspect, for Arthur never rode in to 
the mill with her. 

This night she went off up the main road to- 
ward the ranges. She had a fine sense of freedom 
out there alone with the stars. She had dis- 
covered much more than the wind in the Puhipuhi. 
The place had taught her to love her own com- 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 143 

pany and explore her own mind in a way the city 
had never given her a chance to do. She walked 
her horse and smoked in intense enjoyment of her 
independence. 

When she was not far from Mana’s road she 
heard a rider coming towards her. But the horse 
did not come on. It turned off, and the sounds 
of its hoofs died away. Sidney knew the only 
track anywhere about led into the Joyous Valley. 
She wondered who it was that had ridden in 
there. Then she suspected who it was, and asked 
herself why the suspicion should disturb her. 

But it disturbed her so much that she wanted to 
be sure. When she got to Mana’s road she 
stopped her horse. Then she told herself she 
wa^ a fool. Of course Arthur visited Mana, and 
there was no reason why he should not. It was 
early in the evening (she had the common illusion 
that hours were significant) and, of course, they 
were going to sing together. 

She rode on for some time before turning 
homewards. On the way back she stopped again 
at Mana’s track. She found the impulse to ride 
in irresistible. At the gate on the ridge she 
stopped to listen. She despised herself for thus 
playing spy, a thing she had never done before, 
and told herself that she would learn nothing by 
knowing that it was Arthur who had ridden in. It 
was no business of hers if he had. But when she 


144 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

heard the piano and his voice floating up to her 
she found that some inconvenient emotions inside 
her took it seriously. 

She would have liked to wait there to see how 
long he stayed, but taking herself sternly to task 
she turned her horse and rode out and home- 
wards. She told herself she had no grounds for 
suspecting that the relations between him and 
Mana w r ere anything but friendly. And suppos- 
ing they were, what difference did that make to 
her? She could go on enjoying his company. For 
that she had no business to pry into his private 
life. And she could break off the acquaintance 
any time she chose. 

As she had never yet had to sever any human 
relation she supposed it would be easy. Action 
had always meant yes or no to her. And so far 
her decisions had left no inconvenient trails of 
indecision behind. 

She had herself well in hand the next time she 
went riding with Arthur. He knew she had re- 
treated, and he speculated concerning the reason, 
feeling his interest in her sharpened. It stimu- 
lated him to his best in conversation. He talked 
to her about the British Empire, that inexhausti- 
ble subject of inspiration to wandering English- 
men who flutter about it criticising other English- 
men who are its props. He talked of Africa, and 
the native problem there, of Canada and the 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 145 

French-Canadian problem, and of his favourite 
topic, India. 

She loved to listen to him, though she knew he 
played with the problems of nations as a phi- 
losopher does with ideas. He was a dilettante* 
dabbling in events. He refused to take even the 
British Empire too seriously. 

“We’re doomed, like Greece and Rome, and 
Austria and Spain,” he said lightly to her. “It’s 
America’s turn next. We’ve lost our grip. When 
the native races are organized and educated we’re 
done.” 

Having more of a feminine interest in the pres* 
ent Sidney could not take the prospective fall of 
the British Empire seriously. But it entertained 
her vastly to listen to him, as she did this evening. 
When he was tired of the problems of the Em- 
pire he began to recite poetry. He gave her bits 
from Homer and Ossian, rolling the rich words 
off his tongue with a passionate delight in every 
syllable, that communicated his love of them to 
her. 

She felt more than ever after she had left him 
that evening that she would hate to lose his com- 
pany. 

Their next meeting was at Mana’s. 

At the end of the evening Sidney told herself 
she had been a fool to suspect them. She had 
been unable to detect a sign of any secret relation 


1 46 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

between them, and she was sure she would have 
sensed something if it had been there. She felt 
she had been unjust to them both. And for 
penance she was resolved to be even more re- 
sponsive than she had been. 

The following Sunday morning an Auckland 
curate, a friend of Arthur’s, held the first Episco- 
pal service in the school. Mrs. Jack Ridgefield 
and the Bob Lindsays were Episcopalians, and 
about the bush there were a number of English- 
men belonging to the Church. 

Sidney decided that having stayed away from 
all other services, she would have to stay away 
from this, even though Arthur had asked her to 
go. She sat behind her curtains watching, and 
was astonished to see the number of people who 
arrived. Word had gone round that the curate 
was a good speaker, and that Arthur Devereux 
would sing. 

More than a hundred men from the bush and 
the mill gathered there, and most of the village, 
for the Nonconformist section had no prejudices 
about hearing any brand of doctrine. They were 
only too glad of a diversion. There was not half 
enough room for the congregation. Almost every 
man had to stand, and they packed the school- 
room right up to the little platform on which 
the curate stood at Sidney’s desk. 

She felt, as she sat at her window watching, 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 147, 

that she was missing something, that she could 
have let her consistency lapse for once. But she 
had the feeling that her going would have been 
too significant, too much of a tribute to Arthur’s 
powers of persuasion. 

When she heard his voice rise above all others 
in the opening hymn she was curiously thrilled. 
In the sweet fresh morning it rang out and 
reached her, enhanced by the short space between 
the buildings. She tried to turn her thoughts to 
something else, but she sat on listening for it 
again. 

Arthur sang two solos that the men wanted to 
encore. He told Sidney afterwards that he had 
never sung to a more appreciative audience than 
that curious collection of individuals. The curate 
said it had inspired him also. Altogether it was 
a unique service. She was always absurdly an- 
noyed that she had missed it. 

She was also hurt to think the Ridgefields had 
not asked her to dinner with Arthur and the 
curate. She knew they had very little room, and 
she knew she had made scornful remarks in their 
hearing about churches and clergy in general. 
But still she was chagrined to be left out. She 
had the poor satisfaction, as she watched them go 
by after the service, of seeing Arthur glance once 
or twice at her house. 

Then she went on to listen as pleasantly as she 


148 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

could to the Mackenzies gush about the fine ser- 
mon and Arthur’s wonderful voice. 

It amused her to discover that she hated to be 
left out of something. She realized the pressure 
behind those people who are smitten with the 
fever for being in the swim. 

After dinner she determined to compose her 
mind. She had just decided she would go for a 
ride when she saw Arthur and the curate coming 
to her front gate. In a minute she was keenly 
aware how glad she was to see them. 

As she opened her door she remembered that 
Arthur had never yet been inside her little house. 

“Of course a heathen like you does not deserve 
the beguiling influence of the clergy,” said Arthur, 
after he had introduced his friend. “But as it is 
always good for the souls of the clergy to meet 
the people who cannot be misled by them I’ve 
brought Carruthers to be stimulated by your un- 
belief.” 

“Then I’ll promise to be the most ungodly soul 
he has met for a long time,” she laughed. 

“Thank you, Miss Carey. I do need the 
value of contrasts, I assure you,” smiled the 
curate, and with this understanding beginning they 
began. 

“Carruthers, we are in the presence of the 
cleverest woman in Auckland,” said Arthur sol- 
emnly, looking round at Sidney’s books. 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 149 

Indeed, for the first time, he understood one 
of the things that had made her such a sympa- 
thetic and stimulating listener. If she had read 
all her books she was already familiar with most 
of the things he talked about, he told himself. 
And, to his surprise, she had things he knew 
nothing about. 

The curate picked up a book of remarkable 
drawings by the Australian artist, Lionel Lindsay, 
of whom Arthur had not heard, and began with 
her a discussion on the peculiar genius of Aus- 
tralia, about which she was exceedingly well in- 
formed. 

In his wanderings Arthur had somehow man- 
aged to miss the peculiar genius of Australia. He 
had heard of the Sydney Bulletin, of course, but 
thought it rotten taste, and left it there. He had 
heard of Lindsay Gordon, of Rolfe Boldrewood, 
and Henry Lawson. But of the clever modern 
school of Australian cartoonists, etchers, paint- 
ers and sculptors he knew next to nothing, and 
he sat back and listened humbly while Sidney and 
the curate talked of people he had never heard 
of. 

This gave him leisure to observe her in the 
setting of her interesting room. 

Sidney had made the place speak for her with 
no uncertain voice. Fortunately for her, she had 
always had artistic friends, and she had been 


150 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

given fine things collected by a cousin who dealt 
in Oriental goods, so that her possessions repre- 
sented a taste that had had hothouse cultivation, 
as it were. Also, she had a sense for colour, and 
for placing things so that they preserved friendly 
relations as to size and tone. 

Arthur saw Sidney from a new angle as he sat 
watching her and listening to her. He saw that 
when she got a chance she talked well, even 
though, from his point of view, she took herself 
too seriously. And she had social ease and a grace 
of movement in a room that attracted him im- 
mensely. And besides her polish she had an 
eagerness and spontaneity that had survived the 
rigours of pruning for the social mould. 

“Of course she wouldn’t. What a fool I am!” 
said Arthur to himself, a propos of something 
known only to himself. 

A knock at her back door interrupted the tete- 
a-tete between Sidney and the curate. 

She found Jack and his wife standing there with 
two trayloads of food. 

“We thought you might like to keep them to 
tea,” said Mrs. Jack, in a whisper, “and I thought 
you might not have enough food.” 

“Well, you are bricks,” she said, forgiving 
them instantly for not having her to dinner. 

“It was my wife’s idea,” said Jack, who scorned 
to take credit for anything he did not do. 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 15 1 

He put the trays on her scullery table. 

“I will tell the Mackenzies you will not be 
there to supper,” he said. 

Then Sidney asked the two men to stay to tea 
with her. 

“That’s awfully good of you, Miss Carey,” 
began Arthur, “but I half promised Mana we’d 
go there.” Fie saw a fleeting shadow cross her 
eyes. “Still, we can have tea with you and go 
there later. And you could come along too, 
couldn’t you? Carruthers is going home with me 
afterwards. Our horses are at the stable. Let’s 
do that.” 

Sidney was annoyed that the mention of Mana 
had upset her, and she agreed quickly to hide 
any possible change in her manner. As it was a 
lovely afternoon she asked if they would not pre- 
fer to walk, and suggested the gully. 

The two men were enchanted with it, and the 
glade and the hidden waterfall, and the exquisite 
bit of forest. Sidney easily forgot Mana, for she 
was really enjoying herself immensely. And when 
they got home she made her visitors help with the 
meal as if they had been her brothers. 

She was fully aware that Arthur was watching 
her, but she did not guess that his attitude of 
mind towards her underwent a somersault that 
afternoon. Something she had never felt before 


152 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

stimulated her to pay much more attention to the 
curate than she did to him. 

They reached Mana’s just at dusk. She had 
expected them to tea, and her hospitable table 
was spread in readiness. When she heard they 
had eaten she gave no sign of the quick disap- 
pointment she felt. But Sidney sensed it and felt 
very mean. 

“Let’s turn it into late supper, Mana,” she 
said. “I gave them a very light meal, and they 
will be hungry again soon.” 

She turned to see Arthur’s eyes fixed upon her 
with an eloquent look. He, too, had sensed the 
situation, and her kind intention. Feeling that 
she was about to blush she turned quickly to the 
curate and led him up to a rare piece of Maori 
carving. 

Mr. Carruthers and Sidney openly flirted for 
the entire evening. It is true that they forgot 
each other while Arthur and Mana played and 
sang, but they seemed otherwise to take up every 
available moment as if they found it to be the 
kind of moment they had been looking for for 
years. 

“She can flirt, after all,” said Arthur to him- 
self. “Is it for my benefit, I wonder?” 

At ten o’clock they all did full justice to 
Mana’s supper. 

The two men rode most of the way home with 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 153 

Sidney, and afterwards the curate bored Arthur 
to death with his praises of her. 

At the end of that week Sidney was surprised 
to get a letter from Arthur, written from Auck- 
land, saying he had gone down with Carruthers, 
and expected to be away some time. It was an 
absolutely impersonal letter, so much so that 
she thought it cold, and wondered if she had of- 
fended him by flirting with the curate. 

That disturbed her, and she felt also that she 
would be very lonely without him. As he had 
given no explicit address she could not write, and 
felt hurt to think he did not care to hear from 
her. 


CHAPTER XV 


Two weeks later he wrote again from a Ro- 
torua hotel. He was there, he said, with a friend 
from England who was visiting New Zealand for 
the first time. He gave her an entertaining de- 
scription of tourists and the unique atmosphere 
of the colony’s famous resort. He said nothing 
about his return to the Puhipuhi, but he did say 
he should be pleased to hear from her. 

Sidney was more than glad to hear from him. 
She was finding the place blank without him, 
blanker indeed than she cared to own. She spent 
more time tutoring George Mackenzie, who was 
now studying feverishly for his scholarship, and 
eager for all the attention she could spare him. 
And so it went to her spring vacation. 

On her return she spent the Saturday in 
Whangarei with a friend who happened to be 
there, sent her bag up by the guard in the morn- 
ing and caught the late night train. She had no 
fear of the walk at midnight, and hoped there 
would be nobody she knew who would think it 
his duty to escort her. On the way up in the 
train she wondered if Arthur were back. She 


154 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 155 

had not heard from him since he had left Ro- 
torua, two weeks before. 

When they reached Whakapara she hurried 
out of the carriage round to the back of the wait- 
ing room to let a crowd of drunken bush workers 
get ahead of her. She had not gone many yards 
away from the platform when she heard steps 
behind her. 

“Hullo, Miss Carey. Where did you get to? 
I looked everywhere for you. How are you?” 

And Arthur grasped her hand and looked to 
see if she had anything to carry. 

She had been feeling very tired on the train, 
but now she was suddenly alive and ready for 
anything. 

“Why, when did you get back, you uncom- 
municative and secretive person?” she demanded, 
as if she had a grievance against him. 

“I came on Wednesday’s boat. If I had only 
known that you were coming last night I would 
have waited.” 

“Indeed! Well, if you had been an ordinarily 
decent correspondent, and had displayed the 
slightest interest in my movements, you might 
have known.” 

Though she spoke lightly he saw she had felt 
his apparent indifference. 

“I know. I forgot your vacation. Forgive 
me,” he said with flattering seriousness. 


1 56 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

“Did you come down to meet me?’ she asked 
wondering. 

“I did. At the store this evening Bob volun- 
teered the information that you were expected up 
to-day, and that, as you had not so far arrived 
you must be coming on the late train, and that 
Jack had said somebody would have to come 
down for you. I took the hint.” 

“I thank you,” she laughed. “But I do wish 
they would get over the idea that I can’t look 
after myself.” 

“That’s not quite the idea, is it?” he asked, as 
they swung along the road. “I think Jack’s no- 
tion is that life may be more pleasant for women 
if they don’t hear the kind of language that 
drunken bushmen are liable to use. I’m no sissy, 
but I assure you there can be something pretty 
nauseating about the way these fellows put 
sounds together. I was haunted once for a week 
by a dose I got. That crowd ahead now. You 
really would not like to hear what they are say- 
ing.” 

“I suppose not. But I didn’t propose to.” 

“Well, you never know, Miss Independence.” 

“I’m not that, really,” she said half laughing. 

“I know you’re not. I’ve punctured that ve- 
neer,” he retorted. 

“Oh, you have, have you?” 

She could not tell why, but she felt there was 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 157 

something warmer about his manner than there 
had been in the past, and she wondered if it were 
merely because he was glad to see her again. 

“Of course,” he answered. “Nobody is inde- 
pendent.” 

They swung along in great good spirits. 

“Did you know Mrs. Bill had deserted Bill 
again?” he asked presently. 

“Why, no. When?” 

“This week, so Bob said to-day. Went off 
with one of the bush hands, quite a decent chap, 
quiet, a good worker.” 

“Heavens! How can they do it?” she ex- 
claimed. “Poor Bill.” 

“You needn’t waste any sympathy on Bill. I 
should say he was glad to see her go.” 

“Perhaps,” she said. 

“Let’s cut into the tramway and get ahead of 
the men, if you can hurry,” he said. “There are 
only two trucks up at the top, so we must get 
there first or walk the whole way.” 

She would not have minded that, but she said 
she could run if necessary, so they quickened their 
steps and turned into the bush. Arthur lit the 
track with a flashlight till they came out upon the 
line. Then without a word he took her hand 
and led her into a slow run, stepping from 
sleeper to sleeper. She did not attempt to talk 


ij8 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

as they trotted thus up the slope, for it took her 
all her time to keep up with him. 

When they could hear the drunken laughter of 
the men at a safe distance behind them Arthur 
slowed down. As they were breathing too hard 
for conversation they went on silently. But he 
still held her hand. 

At the trucks they stopped and stood to regain 
their breath. Then he moved the truck on a little 
so that it would run when the brake was released, 
and they got on together. 

He put his arm firmly round her and they 
started off. He drove faster than he had the 
previous time, and she caught the infection of 
something reckless in his mood, an abandonment 
that he had never shown before. She was sure 
something had altered him. She felt now some- 
thing come out of him to clutch her. 

The excitement of it was over all too soon. 
But it had stirred them both. When they got 
off the truck at the stables, he took her hand 
under his arm, and turned with her along her 
track, talking nonsense all the way. 

At her gate he stopped and showed no dispo- 
sition to linger. 

“Good night, little girl. Do we go for a ride 
to-morrow ?” 

She tried to be casual. 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 159 

‘‘I’m afraid I can’t,” she said. “I have too 
much to do.” 

“Next Saturday?” 

“Yes.” 

“All right. Good night.” 

He raised her hand to his lips, and laid it for 
a moment against his cheek with a most beguil- 
ing gesture. 

Then he turned quickly and left her. 


CHAPTER XVI 


That night Sidney told herself she really 
cared for Arthur. But as she was not yet sure 
he was the right kind of man to care for she 
embarked upon her first experience of decisions 
that did not decide. What a mess that experi- 
ence was to make of her principles and her peace 
of mind she fortunately did not foresee. 

When she met Arthur the next time or two she 
was prepared for advances that he did not make. 
He talked better than ever, and on parting from 
her kissed her hand and put it against his cheek, 
as he had before. His restraint baffled Sidney. 
She had expected that he would try to kiss her. 
She was sure now that he cared for her, that he 
meant to make her care. She wondered what 
was holding him back, and suspected it was the 
caution born of some sad previous love affair. 

She grew extremely restless. One evening 
after eight o’clock she was overcome by an im- 
pulse to go off on her horse. It was an irresisti- 
ble night. There were moments when the stars 
talked so eloquently about the magnitude of the 
universe that she forgot the human atom. Her 
160 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 161 

friends the stumps mourned more arrestingly 
than ever the loss of their former glory, and 
every breeze that stirred the mantling fern 
whispered to her the secrets of the spring. 

Within her a potent force was stirring. It 
seemed to swell to bursting point the bounds of 
skin and bone while something about her in the 
night pressed from without to get in. She had 
a curious sense of being caught up and carried 
off on a great wind, even though the night was 
very still. 

She rode on into the ranges, not caring where 
she went. The pony always seemed to know his 
way, and when she turned him he found the road 
home. She had no fear of meeting anybody 
dangerous. The bush workers had other ways 
of working off their emotions than assaulting 
solitary women. She would only have had to say 
who she was to be treated with respect. 

When she had ridden for some time, believing 
she had kept her sense of direction, she pulled up 
on a ridge, looked round at the unfamiliar sky- 
line, and saw she was lost. But only for a minute 
did she feel uneasy. It was too warm for her to 
catch cold. She decided to give the pony his 
head, believing he would get somewhere. 

She took out her cigarettes, and let him stand 
while she smoked. She looked up at the stars 
and round at the sleeping hills and gullies, and 


1 62 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 


grew drunker every moment with the allurement 
of the night. 

Some time after she had started her pony 
again he turned off the well-defined road upon a 
track that passed through straggly bush down 
a slope and ended at a gate. In a clearing ahead 
Sidney saw a light. Whether it was a bush camp 
or a farm she did not know, but she thought it 
might be wise to go ahead and ask where she 
was. 

As she proceeded two dogs ran out and barked 
furiously, and when she got nearer she saw a 
horse tied to a post near the house. The figure 
of a man moved on the verandah. 

“I’ve lost my way,” she called at once, pulling 
up. “Would you be good enough ” 

“Good heavens, Miss Carey. I’ve been think- 
ing of you, and wishing I had you here to go for 
a ride with me. I was just about to set out 
alone. And now the gods have brought you.” 

Though he spoke lightly Arthur had a sense 
that Fate had taken a hand in this, and he felt 
a sudden rush of vitality through his limbs. 

He had been about to go to spend the night 
with Mana. He had told her he would go, but 
he did not want to go. He had been sitting for 
an hour shirking it, swearing it should be the last 
time. He had always hated breaking with worn- 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 163 

en, and he disliked the thought of hurting Mana 
more than he had disliked anything for years. 

Sidney’s heart jumped when she heard his 
voice. She, too, recognised the hand of Fate. 

“Why,” she gasped, smitten with embarrass- 
ment. “I was lost. I had no idea where I was. 
The pony turned in here.” 

“Well, you needn’t apologise for him,” he 
laughed. “He’s a most intelligent animal. Per- 
haps he was born here, and grew reminiscent out 
under the stars.” He patted the pony with his 
face turned up to her. “Now that you’re here,” 
he went on, “get off, and come in and look at 
my diggings.” 

“Oh, thank you, but I think I’d better get 
back,” she said quickly. “It must be late.” 

He felt her uncertainty was due to something 
besides the lateness of the hour. 

“It’s only about ten o’clock. For heaven’s 
sake, child, come in. I’m not an ogre. I won’t 
eat you.” 

She felt at once that her hesitation was silly. 

“There’s nobody else here, and nobody will 
come,” he added. “Of course I should not ask 
you to be seen and gossipped about.” 

Sidney jumped off her pony, determined to 
take the adventure as adventures should be taken. 

“Why, you are an awful way off,” she said, 
as he tied up her horse. 


1 64 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

“Oh, no. Not so far. You have been wan- 
dering round, I expect. I don’t wonder you came 
out. What a night! And the moon is coming 
up. One step. And don’t expect to find my 
diggings like yours.” 

She was intensely curious to see how he lived, 
and horribly disappointed with her first look 
round his front room. 

The unpapered walls were bare of anything 
save an enormous pipe rack holding an incredible 
number of pipes, and several guns. There was 
no couch of any kind. On the three tables were 
piles of books, papers and magazines. There 
were several more or less comfortable chairs. 
The floor was bare. Two doors opened into a 
bedroom and a lean-to. It was clean and fresh 
enough except for a concentrated odour of to- 
bacco. 

But to her it seemed an impossible setting for 
the man, other than as a hunting shack or a 
temporary camp. Surely he did not regard it as 
a home. The forlornness of living that way 
struck her. She wondered what on earth lay be- 
hind it, and felt she must know before she went 
any further with him. 

He had the air of having money behind him. 
She knew he did not need to live this way. She 
told herself there must be some reason for it 
other than mere aimlessness. 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 165 

He sensed her critical attitude, but waited for 
her to put it into words. He took out his ciga- 
rette case. 

“Do you like living this way?” she asked, with 
more of an incredulous tone than she had meant 
to use. 

“At times, yes. One gets the value of con- 
trast, you see.” 

He smiled across the corner of his table as he 
handed her a cigarette. 

“That’s true. Government House must be 
really interesting as an antidote to this.” 

As he had forgotten that he had ever men- 
tioned the Governor to her, he wondered how 
she knew he went there, and asked himself if 
James Ridgefield had been talking. 

“Exactly,” he answered lightly. “And after 
Government House this is health and the other 
half of wisdom.” 

“You Englishmen certainly are funny. You 
find wisdom in such out-of-the-way places.” 

“That explains the Empire,” he retorted. 

“Why do you do it?” she asked, impertinently. 

“Do what?” 

“Go to the ends of the earth?” 

She looked at him over a puff of smoke. 

“Meaning why did I come here?” he smiled. 
He knew she was quizzing him, and he admitted 


1 66 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

her right to. But he would tell her only In his 
own good time. 

“Let me see,” he went on. “Why does any- 
body ever do anything? Does anybody know?” 

“The whole of humanity is not as aimless as 
you. I certainly know why I go here or there.” 

“Wonderful,” he said solemnly. “If you had 
the Wanderlust would you know why you had it?” 
Do you know why you are healthy and sane?” 

“Oh, well, if you come to inherited complica- 
tions ” 

“Are there any that aren’t? But let’s avoid 
that interminable subject. I’ll come to something 
much more pleasant.” 

He rose and went out through one of his doors. 
She heard the sound of glasses. Something about 
being there alone with him in his own house ex- 
cited her to an extent that alarmed her. She took 
another of his cigarettes, and tried to calm her 
nerves. 

Arthur came back with a tray. He had the 
gay air of a boy preparing himself to do some- 
thing solemn in a game. 

When Sidney saw the shape of the bottle and 
the brand of the Burgundy she recognised an 
aristocrat, and instantly remembered the smart 
saying of a friend to the effect that a man never 
wasted good wine on a tete-a-tete without hope 
of reward. 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 167 

Alarmed at her own excitement and uncer- 
tainty, and not at all sure of him, and quite in- 
experienced in such a situation, she ran into a 
blunder. 

“Oh, that’s awfully good of you,” she said 
hastily, “but please, don’t open it. I don’t want 
any. I never drink wine.” 

“You don’t want any!” 

She flushed furiously under his astonished look. 
It made her feel she had committed the unpar- 
donable sin in an evening of good fellowship. She 
saw at once she had blundered. She felt as happy 
as a nervous person who has just upset a glass 
of water into his neighbour’s plate at a formal 
dinner. 

For the minute he was merely boyishly disap- 
pointed to find there was an occasion to which she 
could not rise. If she had not looked so attrac- 
tive as she flushed, so absolutely distressed, he 
would have been hurt. 

He knew she had lied about not drinking wine. 

“Why, my dear girl, do you know what that 
is?” he held the bottle up, gazing adoringly at the 
label. 

“I know,” she stumbled. “But please, I — 
don’t care for any now. It would be a shame to 
waste it on me.” She knew she was making it 


worse. 


1 68 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 


Then he saw there was something in her mind 
that he did not get. 

“All right,” he said. “Then it’s consecrated to 
a future party. You promise that?” 

“Yes,” she answered, trying to be light, and 
glad to put it off that way. 

As he carried the tray out he wondered why 
she had refused to drink with him. He had had 
more than a hospitable idea in offering that wine, 
but it was not the idea she had feared he might 
have had. It was a sentimental idea that amused 
him, suggested by her fateful appearance, the 
idea of cementing a secret contract with his soul. 

When he returned, Sidney was standing in his 
doorway watching the moon coming up. 

“We are wasting a wonderful night,” she said, 
trying to be casual. She wanted to get out. She 
felt she could not stay inside any longer now that 
she had done something to the pleasant flow of 
their mood indoors. 

“Then we won’t waste any more of it,” he 
said, as willing as she to go. 

He called in his dogs, shut his door, and they 
mounted the horses. As they reached the end of 
his track they heard a rider, travelling fast down 
the main road towards them. 

“Damn!” exclaimed Arthur. “Quick. Get 
back.” 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 169 

They turned round and got behind a clump of 
ti-tree. 

The rider came up and passed, but a dog fol- 
lowing him stopped, sniffed and barked. 

The horseman slowed down. 

“Here, Tiger, Tiger,” he called, whistling it 

off. 

“Jack Ridgefield,” said Arthur, under his 
breath. 

“More like the eye of God than ever,” laughed 
Sidney. 

She had now recovered her composure, and 
was determined to make amends for her mistake. 

“I’m glad he didn’t see us. He would not ap- 
prove my nocturnal rides.” 

“I suppose not,” he mused. “There must have 
been an accident up this way, or something gone 
wrong. It’s wonderful the way he gets round this 
place. There isn’t a thing he doesn’t know. 
He’s a most disturbing beggar. It isn’t pleasant 
to be constantly reminded of one’s own futility.” 

“Then why are you futile?” she asked snippily. 

“Yes, indeed. That is the question. But, my 
dear girl, you take my up-bringing — the usual 
thing, tutors, public school, Oxford, sport, the 
estate, family, clubs, the Code, and you have your 
machine-made product — me, futile because I am 
machine-made. Put me against a man like Jack 
Ridgefield, why, I’m pathetic. I’m a pleasant no- 


1 7 o THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

body. And worse still, I know it. IVe never 
done a big thing in my life. I couldn’t brjd any- 
thing. I haven’t an original idea about life. You 
think. So does Jack Ridgefield. You’ve both 
got the courage to change your habits. You’d 
change half of them for the sake of a new idea. 
I wouldn’t think any new idea was worth chang- 
ing one of mine for. That is what the system 
has done to me. But, by God! I can appreciate 
men like Jack. The capacity to do that has not 
been trained out of me.” 

She had never heard him say as much about 
himself before. He ended with the first touch of 
bitterness she had known in him. But his little 
speech of depreciation drew her to him. 

“Well, at least you Englishmen can die won- 
derfully. Look at Captain Scott, and those 


“How like a woman!” he interrupted her. 
“Your sex thinks so much of dying decently. 
That’s training, like everything else. Of course 
Englishmen die decently. The country trains 
them to die. It would be much more sensible if 
it trained them to live half as well.” 

She laughed. 

“Well, there must be a few Englishmen living 
usefully. The British Empire is a substantial af- 
fair.” 

“Yes, my dear, but the English aristocrat isn’t 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 17 1 

running it. He’s riding on the shoulders of the 
men who are, and they are coming from what he 
is pleased to call the inferior classes. In London 
a man like Jack Ridgefield would not be allowed 
to join an exclusive club. Bally rot! Thank 
God I’ve learned that by getting away from Eng- 
land.” 

She enjoyed his castigation. But none the less 
did she admire a great deal of what he stood for, 
and the picturesque class that had produced him. 

Also, she noticed that for the third time that 
evening he had said “my dear” to her. 

The full moon was now well up. Arthur 
stopped his horse, and she reined in hers beside 
him. They were on the crest of a ridge that she 
did not know. They could hear water falling 
somewhere below them. 

“What is that?” she asked. 

“That’s a fall, a beautiful little fall, too. 
There’ll be a lunar rainbow. Let’s go down.” 

“All right,” she assented willingly. 

“We shall have to walk.” 

They jumped off and tied their horses. 

He led the way, turning now and again to see 
if she needed assistance, for the track was rough. 
She caught her divided skirt over one arm, and 
but for it looked like a boy in her leggings and 
pantaloons, as she scrambled down after him. 


i 7 2 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

Once or twice he stopped to admire her sure- 
footed litheness. 

They came out of scrub at the bottom onto a 
large flat rock. The fall dropped into an ex- 
quisite little gully, a natural conservatory of se- 
lected ferns. As he had hoped, the moon illumi- 
nated it all. And arched in the spray above the 
palms there was a perfect silver bow. 

He dropped down on to the rock, and she sat 
beside him. For a while they thought they for- 
got themselves and each other. Then, without 
any preliminary manoeuvres, Arthur stretched 
himself out on his back, and calmly moving her 
hands out of the way, put his head in her lap. 
He took out his cigarette case. His whole action 
was designed to give the impression that he 
meant to be comfortable. 

Then he lit Sidney’s cigarette from his own 
and handed it to her. Coming from him it was 
a significant familiarity, and she knew it. But 
she took it with a calm “Thank you” and looked 
up at the moon. Here under the stars she was 
not afraid of herself or him. 

He turned his face slightly away from her, so 
that she could see against her dark skirt the lines 
of his clear-cut features. His cap had dropped 
off. 

For the first time in her life Sidney’s fingers 
itched to caress a man’s hair. And because it 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 173 

was the first time she supposed it would have 
been too bold a move. She had the old idea that 
a man must make all the gestures that lead up 
to a declaration of love. But she longed to do 
it. Her desires were now speeding fast ahead 
of her traditions. 

After Arthur had lain still for some time she 
moved slightly to relieve the stiffness of her legs, 
and when she settled she let one arm drop easily 
across his chest. Then he caught her hand, hold- 
ing it firmly, and continued to lie apparently ab- 
sorbed in the beauty of the night. 

Presently he raised himself. 

“Am I hurting you?” he asked, with deep 
notes in his voice. 

“Not at all,” she said, catching his eye, and 
looking quickly away again. 

But he sat up. 

“Pm sure that’s not comfortable,” he said 
positively. 

And he drew her round till her head was 
against his shoulder, and his arms were clasped 
about her as if she had been a child. Then, as 
her heart began to thump alarmingly, he threw 
his head up and started to sing softly to the 
moon. 

He sang Hindoo melodies, weird and croon- 
ing. And as he sang he became more irresistible 
every minute. 


i 7 4 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

Sidney forgot her uncertainty, forgot her feel- 
ing about Mana, forgot how little she knew of 
his life. And if she had remembered she would 
not have cared. When a man can sing to a 
woman and the moon as he sang what else matters 
in a sad world? 

When he stopped they both stayed very still 
for an eternity. Then his face looked down as 
hers looked up. Mysteriously the distance be- 
tween them was eliminated. 

They kissed as if they both felt they should 
have begun years before, and as if their lives 
would never be long enough to make up the 
loss. When the first passion of abandonment 
was over Arthur let his lips wander about her 
hair, her ears, her eyes, her cheeks, in a seductive 
trifling. 

“I’m glad you got lost, dear,” he whispered. 

“So am I,” she whispered back. 

She was so blissfully engulfed in this first 
drunken orgy that she did not want to speak. 
And though it was much less of an emotional up- 
heaval for him, he did not want to either. As 
he sat with her head perfectly placed for the 
play of his lips, he could think of other things — • 
of the witchery of the night, of the witchery of 
all such nights, of the painful transitoriness of all 
such nights, of the flat aftermath of such nights. 

But he had spells of complete absorption in the 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 175 

present. It was an unforgettable memory for 
both of them. As they sat there certain of each 
other, they touched heights seldom reached and 
never quite duplicated in poor human lives, so 
pitifully barren of great moments, and yet so 
capable of great moments, if only the champion 
miser, Circumstance, would yield more oppor- 
tunity from her secret treasure. 

They realized then and remembered after- 
wards that the hour had not been spoiled by 
either trying to put into words things that can 
not be put into words. 

Once Arthur broke into a few bars of song 
having nothing to do with the progress of love, 
and once he quoted his favourite Ossian on the 
moonlight. 

Some time in the night they both found them- 
selves growing cold. They got up together, 
stood and looked at each other, threw their arms 
about each other, and swayed upon the flat rock. 
Then silently they climbed up the ridge to their 
wondering horses. 

It was not till they stopped on the road near 
the mill that Arthur said the words she was ex- 
pecting him to say. 

The horses, who seemed to understand the 
situation, stood still together. 

Arthur pulled Sidney half off her saddle. 


176 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

“I love you, dear,” he said simply. “Good- 
night.” 

And as she rode on she did not wonder why 
he had said no more. 

After he had left her he rode fast for some 
miles. When he pulled his horse to a walk, he 
looked up at the moon. 

“The devil! What am I to do with Mana?” 
he asked himself. 

Then he sought forgetfulness from that un- 
pleasant question in his faithful pipe. 


CHAPTER XVII 


The next day Sidney was a wreck. She told 
herself she must not indulge in any more nightly 
rides. It was three weeks off her summer vaca- 
tion. She had her first school examinations 
ahead of her. She had to put every spare minute 
into coaching George Mackenzie. She saw she 
must not allow her emotions to run riot till she 
had this over. 

But she breathed an air that week that created 
strange mirages round her in the little school- 
room. It took all her conscience and all her will, 
neither of them negligible quantities, to keep her 
from seeing Arthur’s dark head in the corners, 
and between the rafters of the ceiling, and in the 
sunlight that streamed through the windows. 
Notes of his song mingled strangely with incon- 
gruous questions as to the result of nine times 
twelve, and the words “I love you” obtruded 
themselves into her object lesson on the making 
of soap. 

She could scarcely endure life till she saw him 
again, which she did the next Saturday afternoon. 
They rode a short distance into a clearing that 
had a fine outlook for twenty miles. 

177 


178 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

There they dismounted and tied up their 
horses. 

Having reasons for it Arthur had thought 
more in those three days than she had. He met 
her meaning to tell her one of two things he felt 
she ought to know, and if she had given him any 
lead or asked him any question he would have 
done so. He said to himself it would not matter 
in the end. 

And perhaps it did not. 

They had one more gloriously irresponsible 
orgy, within limits, of course. There were kinds 
of caressing Sidney would not allow, and he was 
quick to see where he had to draw the line. He 
did not mind the restrictions. They only added 
zest to the ultimate surrender. And he was wise 
enough to know that the prehistoric view of the 
ultimate surrender had anticipatory values of its 
own. 

When they parted Sidney told him she could 
positively spare him only the Saturday afternoons 
till she went away. She was thrilled when he re- 
plied that he would be compensated only if she 
gave him some of her summer. To that she 
gaily agreed. 

Looking back afterwards she thought it strange 
she should have given herself up so thoroughly 
to these two meetings with Arthur in view of the 
amount of speculation she had indulged in about 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 179 

him immediately beforehand. But having tasted 
love she found it irresistible. She might have 
gone on some time without further questioning, 
but for the unexpected. 

In the middle of the next week she went out 
after eight o’clock and down into the gully to 
smoke. She was possessed with a fierce restless- 
ness, a terrible energy that overpowered her. She 
could not get tired. She could not sleep. 

She sat down near the dell, and after finishing 
one cigarette she went on dreaming . 

Presently she heard men’s voices coming to- 
wards her. Jack and his father, who had come up 
the day before, were strolling down. 

Sidney did not move. She meant to get up if 
they came up to her, or if she heard them speak 
of things she was not intended to hear. But they 
came to a standstill a little way off, out of sight 
of her. Jack made some remark about tripping 
the dams again soon, and then after a short silence 
she heard James Ridgefield sneak. 

“It seems that Devereux’s married. I heard it 
last week from the Governor.” 

“That so? I wonder if he has told Miss 
Carey?” 

“Why, what has she got to do with it?” 

“They have been knocking about a bit to- 
gether.” 


180 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

“Pooh! That’s nothing. They naturally 
would up here. Is it being talked about?” 

“Oh, Lord, no. I may be wrong. But I’ve 
seen them together riding.” 

“That’s harmless. Don’t mention it up here, 
anyway. Nobody is ever likely to hear.” 

They had turned back, and their voices died 
away. 

For some time Sidney sat stunned, almost un- 
thinking, conscious mostly of a hard pain in her 
stomach that turned to nausea. For the first time 
in her life she was pitted against something of 
which she had no comprehension, deception. She 
did not know how to cope with it. The great 
art of living one way while you make the world 
believe you live another could not yet claim her 
as one of its devotees. ^ 

So she took it hardly. When she came out of 
her trance of pain she began to rage against 
Arthur. She saw now why he had hesitated and 
retreated in his advances with her. She knew he 
must have told himself he had no business to go 
on. But he had gone on. 

Before she dozed fitfully in the early morning 
she had learned her own capacity for feeling mis- 
ery, and she was appalled by it. She had stupe- 
fied moments fearing that a fate that had shot 
this bolt at her might strike again. She did not 
see what she had ever done that a thing of this 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN i8f 

kind should happen to her. If a man like Arthur 
Devereux behaved in this way whom could she 
ever trust? 

Once or twice she asked herself if there might 
not be a mistake. But she felt that Arthur’s be- 
haviour was explained by James Ridgefield’s state- 
ment, and she never really doubted it. 

She never knew how she dragged herself up 
the next morning to face breakfast at the Mac- 
kenzies. But cold water and brisk rubbing did 
wonders to her face. She explained her tired eyes 
by saying she had not slept very well. Fortu- 
nately nobody expected her to look anything but 
tired, with her school examinations just ahead of 
her. And the Mackenzies, knowing the amount 
of overtime she was giving George, would have 
been the last people in the place to wonder why 
she looked pale or weary. 

She came to herself a bit in the schoolroom. 
Her twenty-five devoted and respectful pupils 
were there to remind her that life goes on much 
the same about the ruins of the individual heart. 
She dragged through the day, forcing herself to 
respond to the constant appeal of those upturned 
faces. She did not shirk anything. She was only 
too glad to work on with George Mackenzie un- 
til after nine that night, and felt hypocritical about 
taking the eloquent thanks of his parents for her 
devotion when she left. 


1 82 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 


Then she went down into the gully to pace up 
and down till midnight. She wanted to tire her- 
self out. She knew she must sleep. 

The minute Arthur rode up to her on Sat- 
urday afternoon he saw something had happened. 

Sidney had not thought of postponing or cutting 
out the meeting. She told herself to go and get 
it over. 

At the first sight of his smile the passionate 
anger that she had expected to sustain her dissi- 
pated shamelessly, and left her looking helplessly 
at him. She was almost sorry to think she was 
going to upset his fine good humour. 

“What on earth have you been doing to your- 
self?” he asked, with a quick anxious look at her. 

Then because she rarely shirked anything, she 
steeled herself to meet his eye, and act as she had 
intended to act. 

“I know you are married,” she said coldly. 

“The devil!” he muttered, reading difficulties 
in the hardness in her face, and wondering how 
on earth she had found out. 

“I’m sorry, my dear, that you have found out 
before I told you,” he added quickly. “I meant 
to tell you last Saturday. I was going to tell you 
to-day.” 

His quiet voice enraged her. Was it possible 
he saw nothing out of the way in his behaviour? 
Till that moment she had had a subconscious 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 183 

hope that there might be some mistake. And 
now he calmly admitted that it was true. Before 
he could go on she burst out furiously. 

“You calmly admit that you are married, and 
that you have made love to me, made me care 

for you without a thought of the results ” 

She choked, unable to go on. 

“My dear girl, I’ve thought of nothing but the 
results. I’m going to get a divorce, of course. 
Now please listen to me. You will understand 
when I tell you all about it. I had no idea you 
would ever hear up here or I should have told 
you long ago. I suppose James Ridgefield told 
you, curse him! But it doesn’t matter. It’s not 
going to alter anything in the long run. Let’s 
ride over there and talk about it.” 

The mention of a divorce had not pacified her 
in the least. It did not at that moment offer 
any way out. Indeed, it made the whole thing 
worse in her eyes. 

“There’s no use our discussing it,” she cried 
passionately. “Our acquaintance is at an end.” 

He looked at her with real fear in his eyes. 
And something of what he felt for her escaped 
from the veneer of his restraint. 

“Is it fair to judge me like that without hear- 
ing what I have to say?” he asked. 

“Perhaps not. Say it, then. I’ll listen.” 

But her tone was terribly discouraging. 


1 84 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

He pointed again to the place where they had 
been the previous Saturday afternoon. 

“Let us go there and talk about it.” 

“No, not there,” she said sharply. “We can 
talk as we are.” 

“We can’t stay here,” he said firmly. “We 
must get off the road somewhere,” and he turned 
his horse. 

For a minute she let him go on, and then she 
could not help herself. She gave her horse the 
rein and followed. 

They rode like that in an uncomfortable silence 
for more than a mile. Then he took a narrow 
track that led nowhere in particular, and stopped 
when they were out of sight and hearing of the 
main road. In a small fireswept clearing with 
a narrow vista over one of the numerous gullies 
he tied their horses. 

Sidney sat down on a stump on which it was 
impossible for more than one person to sit. Her 
hard coldness was the most uncomfortable thing 
Arthur had known for years. But he told him- 
self it served him right. He sat down on the 
ground opposite her, prepared to be exceedingly 
diplomatic. 

“I’m terribly sorry,” he began. “I know I 
ought to have told you before. But I never 
dreamt you’d hear. I can’t understand James 
Ridgefield. Men don’t usually talk ” 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 185 

“Mr. Ridgefield did not tell me,” she inter- 
rupted coldly. 

“Then how the deuce ?” he paused. He 

saw that did not matter, and that he had better 
begin his. story. 

“I am married. My wife is in England. I 
left her years ago. I have started divorce pro- 
ceedings. I began when I was away this spring. 
I knew before I went away that I cared for you. 
But I did not tell you, I did not make love to 
you, till I was sure of the divorce, and as I shall 
be free within six months, and we can marry any 
time after that I did not think it would matter 
exactly what week I told you.” 

Though she felt an immense relief at his words, 
at the possibility of a way out, she was still full 
of the idea that he had deceived her, and she had 
suffered too deeply to rebound quickly. 

“That’s just where you are wrong,” she an- 
swered coldly. “You should have told me in the 
beginning. Nothing can alter the fact that you 
have deceived me for months. And if you de- 
ceive me in one way you will in another. I can’t 
be sure you are going to get a divorce. Indeed 
you can’t yourself. What proof have you?” 

“The friend who came out this winter told 
me the facts,” he went on, quietly. “In England, 
of course, I have to prove my wife unfaithful. 
It has only recently become possible. My friend 


1 86 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 


told me that my wife is now living with a man 
known to us both. He is much wealthier than L 
They are anxious for me to get the divorce. 
There will be no difficulties put in the way. It 
is certain, as certain as anything in this world.” 

“I shall not consider it certain till I see the 
proofs,” she said harshly. “And you have put 
me in a false and difficult situation. I hate under- 
hand behaviour. You tricked me into feeling and 
showing what I felt. And I think it is out- 
rageous.” 

She was so angry at his calmness that she 
could have screamed at him. 

“My dear girl, for heaven’s sake don’t read 
into this thing obstacles that don’t belong to it. 
I am exactly the same man that you loved last 
week.” 

“Oh, no, you are not,” she exclaimed angrily. 

“Will you please explain the difference.” 

“Last week I trusted you. Now I don’t.” 

“That doesn’t alter me. It merely alters your 
conception of me.” 

“Good heavens! Isn’t my conception of you 
the whole thing as far as I am concerned?” She 
was exasperated at his lightness. She told her- 
self to get up and leave him, but could not. 

“The whole thing?” he repeated. “For how 
long? Conceptions are as changeable as the 
weather. Your idea of me will change every year. 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 187 

My idea of you has changed entirely in six months. 
The one thing that has not changed is that I 
love you. You loved me last week, and you love 
me now. Oh, yes, you do. The only difference 
is that last week you admitted it, and now you 
think you shouldn’t. But you love me just the 
same.” 

Sidney fought back her increasing helplessness, 
determined that she would not be talked round 
like this, savage to think that after her three 
days’ misery he should sit there looking at her i 
with his vanity triumphant, and his calm un- 
ruffled. 

She stood up. 

“I don’t think there is any use our discussing 
it any farther,” she said, turning to walk off. 

He let her go a few yards till she began to 
walk as if she were blind, and then he sprang to 
his feet and followed her. 

‘‘Sidney, please don’t be a fool,” he cried. 

And as she paused he caught up to her and 
seized her by the shoulders. 

She could not look at him. There was a film 
across her eyes. She had a queer feeling that 
she was trapped, that she would never get away 
from him, that her intelligence and her principles 
had nothing whatever to do with this business. 

“Sidney, you have never lied to me. Do you. 
love me?” 


1 88 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 


All the feeling that life had left him, and it 
was a considerable amount, went into his tone. 

“It doesn’t matter whether I do or not ” 

“Really! Now, that’s the first lie you have 
ever told me. You know as well as I do that it 
matters more than anything else in the world to 
both of us. What is the matter with you, child? 
You have suffered far too much already for my 
damned mistake. Do you really have to suffer 
any more ?” 

Something about his tone broke her. She 
cursed herself for her weakness, but the .tears 
welled out of her eyes. She bit her lips and 
choked. Then she found herself down on the 
ground with his arms about her. 

Arthur said nothing for some time. Far more 
powerful than any words was the language of 
his arms held still about her with no attempt 
at caressing. But when she had ceased to sob, 
and lay still, he leaned down and put his cheek 
against hers. 

“Damn it all,” he said hoarsely. “Not for 
worlds would I have had you hurt like this.” 

She drew herself up and out of his arms, and 
stared away across the narrow bit of gully visible 
between the trees. She felt as if she had lost her 
soul, or whatever it was she called herself. 

“Listen to me, dear,” began Arthur, with a 
voice that was fatal to wavering principles, “I 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 189 

love you. I made one tragic mistake years ago. 
I know that in loving you I’m not making an- 
other. That’s why I want you, why I must have 
you, why I would do anything to get you. Now, 
don’t think I deceived you — that is, I did, but 
please see why I did. And as I had no idea you 
could ever hear of my being married I did not 
think it mattered so much what day I told you.” 

Turning she looked keenly at him. 

“When did you first hear you might get the 
divorce?” she asked. 

“When I went to town with Carruthers.” 

“Suppose you had not learned you could get 
a divorce, what would you have done?” 

“I don’t know, my dear. Do we have to settle 
that inconvenient problem now, when it doesn’t 
exist?” There was a smile in his eyes. 

“You cared for me before you went away,” 
she went on, her eyes still fixed on his. 

“I believe I did.” 

“And you would have come back?” 

“I don’t know. I went meaning to stay away.” 

“You did?” 

“Yes, but I should probably have come back,” 
he said frankly. 

She looked away from him. His love might 
be immoral, but after all it was a warming thing. 
But she was strong and ruthless. She told her- 
self she must make a stand for her principles. 


1 9 o THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

“You should have told me months ago,” she 
repeated. 

“I know that.” 

“Why didn’t you?” 

“You might have refused to go out with me. 
And then you would never have learned to love 
me. 

“I see. You meant to deceive me till you were 
sure of me?” 

“Yes, I suppose I did.” 

“You see that method allows me no freedom. 
I should have preferred to know and to care 
knowing.” 

“You are conventional and very strong. I 
was afraid.” 

“That’s just it. You thought of yourself and 
not of me.” 

“Does that matter now? Now that we care 
for each other? Now that I am going to con- 
sider you and not myself?” 

Drawing a long breath she looked away from 
him again, and made a desperate effort to think 
her own thoughts. 

“Arthur, you talk wonderfully. When I’m 
with you it’s a case of ‘Almost thou persuadest 
me.’ But I live a good deal of my life away from 
you, and if when I am away from you I feel I 
cannot trust you the result is going to be some- 
thing you cannot control. It’s true I cannot talk 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 19 1 

against you. But I can think against you. And 
I cannot continue to care for a man I do not 
trust. You have given me a horrid jolt. You 
have put doubt into my mind. You have abused 
my trust. And the thing I see is that you will 
do it again, if you think it wise, without any 
reference to me. Now if you wish our acquaint- 
ance to proceed you will have to give me your 
word of honour that you will never deceive me 
again.” 

“Oh, my God!” groaned Arthur. 

There was something so comical about his 
gesture of despair that her sense of humour 
righted itself. 

“My dear girl,” he cried, “you can’t be serious. 
I expect to deceive you, or at least to try to, 
scores of times. How like twenty, or whatever 
it is you are! No woman of forty would ever 
ask such an impossible thing of a man. She’d 
say ‘For God’s sake, don’t tell me what you are 
doing. Deceive me. Let me keep my illusions.’ 
But I will tell you what I will do. If you will 
promise and guarantee beyond all doubt that you 
will never be disturbed by the truth, whatever it 
is, that you will never be upset by anything I do, 
then I promise to tell you everything I mean to 
do and don’t, and everything I don’t mean to do 
and do. Is it a bargain?” 

Sidney dropped her head into her hands. 


i 9 2 the passionate puritan 

For a minute he did not know whether she 
were laughing or crying. In truth, she was hiding 
a smile. She had seen the absurdity of her re- 
quest. But youth is such a stickler for certain- 
ties, has so voracious an appetite for illusions, 
finds it so hard to reduce life from the glamour 
of the fairy tale to the garish light of realism. 

Sidney told herself she must not let him win as 
easily as this. That if he could not make stand- 
ards for himself she must make them for him. 

She raised a serious face. 

‘‘You know what I mean, Arthur. You must 
not lie to me about essential things. Now don’t 
ask me to define ‘essential thing.’ ” She had seen 
that coming. “You know what I mean. And 
whatever you may say, I cannot regard myself 
as engaged to you till I see the proofs of your 
divorce. Indeed, now that I come to think of it, 
you have not asked me to marry you.” Her 
eyes narrowed as she looked at him. 

“My dear girl, of course I ask you to marry me. 
I supposed you understood that.” But he was 
conscious that in the beginning it had not been his 
intention. He had not foreseen that he would 
care as he cared now. “I ask you now, 
formally, Sidney Carey. Will you marry me as 
soon as I am free?” 

“I don’t know,” she said gravely. “I cannot 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 193 

say that yet. In any case I cannot call myself 
engaged to you.” 

“All right, my dear. I don’t care what names 
you call our relation so long as our relation goes 
on.” He smiled wisely at her. 

She looked at him wondering if she would ever 
get the best of him. She knew she was already 
beginning to feel that his being married would 
not make the difference she had supposed it would. 
She was curious to know one or two things. 

“How long is it since you left your wife?” she 
asked. 

“About seven years.” 

“And you haven’t got a divorce?” 

“I didn’t care enough about anybody to try,” 
he said, looking gravely at her. “And then, I 
left her. I needn’t go into the reason. A com- 
mon story. I left her on my estate with an ade- 
quate income. And I left England, and have 
knocked about ever since. We had no children. 
As far as I know I could not have got a divorce 
till recently. But then, I never tried to find out 
how she was living. Is there anything else you 
would like to know?” 

She saw that the whole thing was a hideous 
memory and that he hated to speak of it. The 
fact that it was so remote made a further dif- 
ference to her feeling about it. 


i 9 4 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

“No, indeed,” she said, her tone softening. “I 
did not mean to be curious.” 

“I know you didn’t. And you are entitled to 
know anything you wish to know about it. But 
the whole thing is rather a ghastly memory. I 
hate to think of it. I hate to have it raked up 
in a divorce. And I should have preferred to 
have the thing over without telling you. There 
really was no need for you to know. By the way, 
how did you find out?” 

She hesitated. “I heard Mr. Ridgefield tell 
Jack. I was placed so that I could not help it.” 

“The devil! Jack, of course! I hope they 
will keep it to themselves.” 

“I’m sure they will.” Then she thought of 
something, and looked away. He saw at once 
she was going to speak, or repress the desire to 
speak of something significant. 

“Does Mana know you, are married?” she 
asked, trying to be casual. 

“Mana! No, my dear. Why on earth should 
she?” There was natural surprise in his tones. 

“Oh, I don’t know. I just wondered if you 
had told her.” 

She looked straight at him. 

“There is something on your mind,” he said 
quietly. “What is it?” He wanted to find out 
then and there whether it was knowledge or sus- 
picion that had caused her to speak of Mana. 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 195 

“I suppose Pm stupid,” she said, rather doubt- 
fully, “but I want to ask you one more thing. Is 
there anything between you and Mana? You 
know what I mean.” 

“You mean are we living together? No, my 
dear, we are not. And will you tell me why you 
ask? Let’s settle that bogey here and now.” 

He risked this answer. It was true, but he 
dare not tell her then how recently it had become 
true. 

“I don’t know,” she answered, with a sense of 
relief. “I’ve had a feeling there was.” 

“For heaven’s sake don’t cultivate feelings of 
that kind, my dear. They’re unnecessary, and 
they’re uncomfortable. I tell you again, there is 
nothing but a pleasant friendship between Mana 
and me. And it will continue as long as I stay 
here. I have no reason for breaking it. I shall 
go and see her occasionally, as I always have.” 

He spoke with a deliberate frankness, and 
with considerable relief to think he had cleared 
that danger so easily. 

She looked out over the valley thinking how 
absurd her suffering of the last three days had 
been. But it had been, and she could not forget 
it all at once. Like a person who has had a 
serious illness she had to learn again to walk the 
ways of ease and gladness. Though she saw she 
would have to accept Arthur’s explanation, in- 


i 9 6 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

deed, she was only too glad in her secret heart to 
accept it, she had lost something she would never 
get back. The dreamer in her was gone. The 
first flush of irresponsible loving was over. She 
would keep her Arthur with reservations, seeing 
him a little more clearly. She had begun the 
funeral services that human beings have to hold 
over their illusions once they are committed to 
idealizing a member of the opposite sex. 

Seeing that the worst was over, Arthur took 
out his pipe. But he did not do it lightly. He 
had spent a wretched afternoon so far. It had 
made him see how much he cared for her, and 
how much he hated to hurt her. 

He lit a cigarette for her. As she took it their 
eyes met. 

Impulsively he threw an arm around her. 

“Please forgive me, dear,” he said hoarsely. 
“If I can help it you shall never suffer like this 
again.” 

And she knew he meant it with all the decency 
that was in him. 

She put her head against his shoulder. 

And the peace of that reconciliation was a 
peace thatpasseth understanding. 


CHAPTER XVIII 


Sidney had adjusted her mind to a renewal 
of their warm relation before she left on her 
summer vacation. She had been a bit worried 
at first lest anything should hold up the divorce. 
But she was only too glad to tell herself that she 
loved Arthur well enough to wait for him, well 
enough to share obstacles with him. Her relief 
as she lay awake the night of the explanation 
showed her how deeply her feelings were com- 
mitted. It would not be long before she could 
laugh at the dreadful days that had preceded it. 

But the knowledge that Jack Ridgefield knew, 
that perhaps Sophie knew, determined her to be 
very careful in the Puhipuhi. Not for worlds 
would she have forfeited their respect. She saw 
Arthur only once again before leaving for her 
six weeks’ holiday. That sacrifice intensified the 
delight she felt in looking forward to the time 
they would have together in the summer. 

Arthur had made good use of their last meet- 
ing. He turned her thoughts to the future. He 
painted alluring pictures of England, of trips to 
the Continent, of London. And she saw how 


197 


198 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

much he looked forward to seeing it with her, 
and to having her help him to forget the tragedy 
that had driven him from it. 

She needed no stimulus to look forward to it. 
That magic phrase “the estate” conjured up 
scenes of rural charm and old-world atmosphere 
that in their secret hearts the most democratic 
of “far-flung” pioneers adore. And London! No 
Englishman is capable of feeling for London that 
concentrated reverence and yearning that comes 
to the dreaming colonist on a New Zealand hill- 
top or an Australian plain. To most of them 
London has the painful lure of the unattainable — 
the mournfulness of saying year after year “Per- 
haps I can manage it next,” and of fearing the 
while that it won’t be managed. But the illusion is 
hugged and fed and never allowed to die. There 
is always the prospect that something may hap- 
pen — and one may really get there at last. 

Almost the entire professional New Zealand 
world saves up for it. Doctors, lawyers, profes- 
sors, teachers, and the civil service see it in ex- 
tended vacation dreams. Farmers see it in that 
happy future when their children shall be grown 
up, and the farm prosperous. Business men see 
it in the extension of their trade. Politicians see 
it in the High Commissioner’s office. Miners see 
it when they get the windfall. The plain working- 
man sees it in his savings bank balance. 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 199 

No one can tell you what it means to him. It 
is just London, sung from the tongue, with a com- 
prehensive smile, and something indefinable in 
the eyes. 

Sidney already had her passage money in the 
bank, and it must be confessed that the vision 
of her future with Arthur took all the significance 
out of her first annual examinations, and rendered 
her strangely indifferent to the success of George 
Mackenzie, upon whom she had bestowed so much 
careful tutorship. 

After two weeks in Auckland of friends who 
were not breathing the rarefied air of a secret 
passion, Sidney was thrilled to meet Arthur, and 
to learn that they were to go with a party on a 
cruise of the islands in the Hauraki Gulf. It 
was an entrancing trip that she had always wanted 
to take. They went on a large launch belonging 
to one of his friends, carrying provisions and 
tents. There were six men and six women, one of 
the couples being married to provide the farce of 
chaperonage that never chaperones. 

The whole thing was rather breathlessly in- 
formal. Sidney had never experienced anything 
quite like it. But she was determined that she 
would live up to Arthur and not spoil sport. Also 
she was interested enough on her own account to 
be amused at it. It was a very clever and jolly 
crowd. 


200 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

The men were supposed to sleep on shore at 
night, and the women to occupy the cabins on 
the launch. Sidney had a suspicion that queer 
things happened to this arrangement. Very irreg- 
ular hours were kept, and as little clothing as 
possible was worn with an air of superb natural- 
ness. The men usually wore their pajamas to 
breakfast, to change afterwards into bathing 
suits, and did not dress till the night meal. 

Arthur had a pair of blue silk pajamas that 
were the envy of everybody on board. They 
were a most unusual shade. Sidney was a little 
startled the first time he appeared in them, but 
he looked so adorable, and they were so obviously 
worn to fascinate her, that her mild scruples 
speedily vanished. 

She told herself many times that Arthur was 
behaving beautifully. He paid her the subtlest 
kind of attentions and never for a moment al- 
lowed any other woman to claim him. It had 
been a carefully selected party. Only couples 
deeply interested in each other were asked. So 
there was no poaching, no friction. Sidney had 
her man to herself as much as she wanted him. 
And what can be more satisfying, more productive 
of a charitable point of view? She easily closed 
her eyes to some little things that were not quite 
up to her standard of ethics. 

But she saw before the trip was over that she 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 201 


and Arthur were faced with the problem of most 
engagements. One night as they sat in a nook by 
the sea, a mile away from their camp, Arthur for- 
got for a moment that he and Sidney were not the 
free unfettered lovers of an Arabian Night’s tale. 
Disengaging his arms with a firmness not to be 
mistaken she got to her feet and walked a few 
yards away, and then stood looking out on the 
water. 

Presently Arthur rose and came up to her. 

“I’m sorry,” he said simply, and taking out his 
pipe began to smoke. 

She took his arm and they started walking in 
silence along the beach. 

Sidney was not afraid of love, but she had set 
a standard for herself which in spite of the relax- 
ing moral atmosphere of the launch party she 
meant to maintain. She could be humorous on 
the subject of unconventional love where others 
were concerned, but she did not intend it to be- 
come even a problem for herself. She just buried 
her head in the sand. 

As she was wondering what she should say to 
Arthur, another couple that had been sitting on 
the beach ran down and joined them in the walk 
back to the camp. 


CHAPTER XIX 


Sidney went back to the Puhipuhi to find a 
halo round her head. George Mackenzie had 
come second on the scholarship list for the Auck- 
land Province, and the Inspector had reported 
her first year results as remarkable. The Board 
sent her a letter of congratulation, and her 
“parents” met her bursting with pride in her. 
Mrs. Mackenzie almost wept, and Tom was at 
first unable to speak of the success of George, 
for they well knew that Sidney had made the 
chance for him, and had let nothing go that would 
count. 

Jack Ridgefield and Sophie welcomed her back 
with a warmth that surprised her. Her school 
committee racked its collective brain to think 
of something that would show its appreciation. 
After proposing all kinds of impossible presents 
they finally took the advice of Jack Ridgefield 
simply to write her a letter with their signatures 
appended and have it suitably framed. Bob 
Lindsay spent three evenings and compiled nine 
editions of it before they were all satisfied. The 
committee called upon her in a body to present 


202 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 203 

it. And Sidney, contrasting the simplicity of the 
scene and the honesty of the expression with 
much of her exotic summer setting, found it good. 
She did not wish to get into a state when she 
saw the whole of life as one kind of atmosphere. 

She had seen at once that the Ridgefields were 
expecting their first baby. Though they lived 
in an intense world of their own anticipating the 
event, they determined they would not be publicly 
idiotic. They had not mentioned it to anyone 
yet, and had the idea that nobody knew. Sidney 
felt the difference in Jack Ridgefield. He had 
softened. She wondered how that quiet little 
Sophie had done it. 

Sidney had been rather surprised to see how 
deeply she had enjoyed meeting Jack and his 
wife again. They stood out in contrast to many 
of the people she had met that summer, particu- 
larly to the men and women of the launch party. 
The latter were all right, she told herself, for 
occasional dessert, but give her Jack and Sophie 
for a steady diet. 

They asked her to tea the night after she re- 
turned. Later, when Jack had gone to the store, 
Sophie brought out a basket of sewing, and made 
no pretence of hiding the little garments. She 
announced the fact to Sidney merely by holding 
up a midget shirt. 

“Well!” exclaimed Sidney, as if she had not 


204 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

guessed. “Of course you’re delighted. What 
do you want it to be?” 

“Oh, a boy, I suppose. Jack, of course, wants 
it to be a hoy.” And then Sophie began to talk 
of something else. She had a horror of boring 
Sidney with a subject so unintellectual as babies. 

But Sidney, now dreaming of babies-to-be for 
Arthur and herself, would gladly have talked 
about them, and worked off some of the emotion- 
alism running riot in her. She almost told Mrs. 
Jack, but decided that, as the situation was pecu- 
liar, and as it was Arthur’s business as well as 
her own, she had better not. 

There were reasons why she was glad Arthur 
was not returning to the Puhipuhi for two or three 
weeks. She had lived so intensely during the 
summer that she wanted time to catch up with 
her composure, as it were. She did not want to 
become the kind of drivelling idiot in love she had 
known some of her acquaintances to be. Also, 
she had to appear in the village as if nothing had 
happened to her. And, above all, she wanted to 
be normal before the Ridgefields. 

With more time on her hands she wandered 
about at night, thinking and dreaming. Even 
though she was bound hand and foot to Arthur 
she liked to think she was judicial, that she could 
stand off and view herself and him. She liked to 
analyse him; his comfortable mind, his boyish 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 205 

ways, his many attractions of heart and manner. 
He had been a long way more interesting, she 
told herself impartially, than any man she had 
ever met. 

One night she stole into the mill, over the saw- 
dust, under the maze of belts and wheels, and sat 
down at the edge of the dam. She had managed 
several times to get in there unseen by the old 
night watchman. She loved the powerful silence 
of the stagnant machinery, the vast energies 
chained in those belts and wheels, the symbol of 
power in the great construction. 

And thinking of them her thoughts wandered 
to Jack Ridgefield, who had built this thing, who 
knew the significance of every nut and screw in 
it, who controlled the men who daily changed it 
from a sleeping giant to a torrent of motion where 
man trod warily among a thousand jaws of death. 

She had lost no fraction of admiration for the 
Jack Ridgefields of the world. Unconsciously 
words of Arthur’s drifted into her mind, “I coulcl 
never build anything.” She shrank from the ob- 
vious comparison, feeling it was disloyal. Then, 
because she had shrunk from it, she turned back 
to it. She saw that her ideal man would have 
been a combination of Arthur and Jack. Was 
it an impossible combination? she wondered. It 
was not the first time she had seen that there 
were things Arthur could never give her. 


20 6 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

Stealthy steps broke in upon her thoughts. She 
started to find Jack standing close beside her. 

“Why, Miss Carey! I thought it was the 
watchman!” He looked curiously down upon 
her through the gloom. 

She felt Tike a child caught stealing jam. 

“Oh, I came here to listen to the silence,” she 
said uncertainly; “it’s weird, isn’t it?” 

“Yes,” he answered. “I’m rather fond of it 
myself. Do you often come here?” 

“I’ve just been once or twice. Nobody has 
seen me.” 

She knew he had a rule that women were not 
to enter the mill unless accompanied by himself 
or his father. 

“Of course,” she added lightly, “I might have 
known you would find out. You are the eye of 
God, you know.” 

Jack gave his curious little snigger, intended to 
be a laugh. 

“You don’t suppose I could run this place if 
I wasn’t, do you?” 

“How do you do it?” 

Much of the admiration she felt deepened her 
voice. 

“How do you teach, and make records?” he 
asked. 

“It’s not the same,” she said. “Children are 
very easy to manage.” 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 207 

“Men are easy to manage,’’ he said. “And I 
found out why years ago.” 

“Why?” 

“Because they have never ceased to be chil- 
dren.” 

“All the same, few people can manage them 
as you do.” 

“It seems very simple to me,” he said quietly. 

“Well, you were fortunate enough to be born 
knowing how.” 

“Yes, that’s all it is.” 

They were silent for a minute. 

“Were you looking for the watchman?” she 
asked. “I heard him up above, I think, a few 
minutes ago.” 

“Yes. I’ll find him presently. I usually look 
him up in an evening.” 

“Dear me! Does he need to be watched him- 
self?” 

“No, indeed. He’s a fine old fellow with a 
conscience. But it’s pretty dull hanging round 
here all night. I like to drop in and show him I 
think he’s worth noticing. That kind of thing 
costs nothing and goes a long way.” 

“Yes,” she smiled up at him, “that’s how you 
manage the men.” 

“Hm!” he said, as if his thoughts were a long 
way off. 

He towered above her, mysterious like his 


208 THE PASSIONATE PUFvITAN 


wonderful machinery. She wondered if he were 
lonely, and felt he must be. She questioned if 
his quiet little wife understood him, or touched his 
life at many points. She probably managed him 
wonderfully, all the better because she did not 
understand him, and did not struggle to. She 
accepted him without probing too deeply into 
the intricacies of his temperament. Certain com- 
binations of men and women get on very com- 
fortably that way. 

As he went off Sidney had the feeling she had 
always had that she would have liked the chance 
to try her personality on him, would have liked 
to get at him. She saw that Arthur was a trans- 
parent babe beside him. 

Jack wondered as he walked away why she 
wandered about in the night. He knew she had 
ridden out alone since her return without the 
object of meeting Arthur. He wondered if there 
was anything between them, wondered with a 
vague condemnation of him, but none of her. She 
now interested him because she had shown that 
she could do good work. Because she had man- 
aged to keep her independence and yet offend no 
one in the village. Because she had a conscience 
and character. He thought particularly well of 
the start she had given to George Mackenzie. 
But he did not understand her in the least. If 
men were simple to him, women were inscrutable 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 209 

mysteries. He was more or less at sea with her 
mentality and always would be. He was extraor- 
dinarily pure male. And he got near to women 
only through the medium of sex. 

Sidney sat on, continuing her comparison of the 
two men. It disturbed her rather to have the 
shadow of Jack Ridgefield cast upon the pedestal 
upon which she had exalted Arthur. It disturbed 
her that she could think about the difference be- 
tween them. She thought of friends to whom love 
had been an engulfing delirium that had obliter- 
ated all smudges upon the shining robes of the 
beloved. And she wished she could have been 
capable of the glorious folly. 

She saw now that she was doomed to go through 
life on compromise, that grim adjuster in the 
aftermath of great expectations that youth de- 
fies as long as it is able, and succumbs to only 
in the last ditch. 

She went home wishing she did not see these 
things. She wanted her Arthur as irreproach- 
able as she could make him. She fell back upon 
her happy summer. For that he had been a per- 
fect lover, she told herself. And what was al- 
most as good to her, a constantly interesting and 
responsive companion. 

The summer had dissipated her doubts about 
him. He had talked freely about his past, a re- 
mote past, w T hen he had done things he did not 


2io THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 


care to think about, the usual things that young 
men did when trying to learn about themselves 
and the world. She had heard him, asking no 
questions, forgiving that past, as she knew all 
women did. 

She was more interested to have him talk of 
the future, a future in which he meant to take 
up the responsibilities of his estate. She was 
eager to contribute ideas for the benefit of ten- 
ants, eager to spur him on to benefit the human 
race. The fact that he had had no real work to 
do had troubled her more than she would have 
admitted even to herself. 

But she was no less in love with him when he 
returned because she had been able to think 
clearly about him in his absence. 


CHAPTER XX 


Soon after Arthur returned Sidney found her- 
self faced with the problem that had cast its 
shadow before that summer. 

They had met in the dell at his suggestion. He 
was tired of going out with her in riding clothes, 
he said. 

Sidney was only too glad to share with him the 
romance of the one place about the mill where 
she had been able to enjoy beauty and solitude. 
The lovely little gully was indeed a perfect setting 
for the exalted mood of happy lovers. Its elusive 
witchery stirred to further eloquence their already 
inspired tongues and they rhapsodized together 
about themselves and their future and the glory 
of the night. 

Presently they sat down in a little natural ar- 
bour by the brook, and with his arms about her 
Arthur began to sing snatches from the love songs 
of Tristan and Isolde. And, as he sang, he 
brought the words out of their legendary setting; 
brought the burning words there as the eternal 
voice of love whispering from the haze around 
them in the little dell. 


21 1 


2i2 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 


He stopped suddenly, and drawing Sidney’s 
face upwards he pressed his lips against hers. 

She yielded for a moment, and then started out 
of his arms and moved away from him. They 
both felt as if a rock had crashed down into the 
peace of the glen behind them. At first they had 
the curious mental discomfort of the broken 
mood. Then Arthur felt a keen sense of irrita- 
tion at Sidney’s attitude, at what he called her 
utter lack of the adventurous spirit, but because 
he really adored her he sat still for some minutes 
trying to hide his annoyance. Then he scrambled 
to his feet, took out his cigarettes, and lit one. 

“Let’s walk,” he said abruptly. 

They began to smoke, and without talking 
walked slowly up the track and out on to the flat 
among the reminiscent stumps. The hazy sum- 
mer night soothed their fretted nerves. Arthur 
threw off his feeling of resentment and recovered 
his sense of humour. Taking her arm he began 
to talk with a detached frankness and quiet seri- 
ousness about the problem of man and woman. 

They paced back and forth, talking late into 
the night. Sidney had never discussed the sub- 
ject even with a woman at such length or with 
such plainness. She was surprised how natural 
it was to be doing it with Arthur. And she was 
surprised to find that an examination of the sub- 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 213 

ject lessened in some mysterious way the tradi- 
tional taboo. 

At the end of the conversation she found she 
had not an argument in favour of chastity. There 
was not a thing she could say that Arthur could 
not prove to be merely a superficial command 
that no one with a particle of character consid- 
ered. But throughout the talk he kept the per- 
sonal note entirely out of it. He did not ask her 
to change. In fact, at the end, he told her he 
understood and admired her attitude. 

But the result of this conversation was that in 
a day or two she began to ask herself why indeed 
she should not live with Arthur. And thereby 
set herself the most difficult problem that life 
sets the modern woman. And in comparison with 
this moral struggle her previous ones were as a 
grain of sand set up beside a mountain. 

For now she had to reckon with the life force 
pounding through her. And life forces care 
nothing for the scruples of the mediums through 
which they forge their way. She was terribly dis- 
turbed to find she could not settle the problem by 
simply saying to herself “I will not.” Her mind 
to-day revoked the decision of yesterday till she 
felt she was a pawn in the hands of some grim 
player whose only idea of movement was a zig- 
zag between adjacent lines. The thing that 
frightened her most was the strength of her own 


214 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

feeling. She began to be afraid to be alone with 
Arthur. She felt he was not trying as he might 
to help her. 

“You don’t play fair,” she reproved him, as 
they rode together. 

“Of course I don’t,” he laughed back. “Who- 
ever heard of a man in love playing fair? You 
seem to think, my child, that we can manage this 
business. We can’t. It’s managing us. If I 
could carry you off this minute I would. So keep 
your weak moments away from me.” 

“The thing I complain of is that all your mo- 
ments are weak,” she retorted. 

“No they’re not. But unfortunately they are 
very likely to coincide with your weak ones.” 

She had to laugh. She could not complain of 
his lack of frankness now. 

She thought a good deal about his charge that 
she took herself much too seriously. 

“You women eternally overestimate the im- 
portance of your actions to the universe,” he com- 
plained, looking at the stars. “What do they 
care?” He pointed upwards. “You think every- 
thing will go to pieces if you don’t have the right 
idea about the family or the status of God in 
modern civilization.” 

“I don’t care a bit about the family or the 
status of God,” she retorted. 

“Perhaps not. But you think your physical 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 215 

chastity for a certain number of months is a big 
thing to humanity.” 

“I don’t. But I think it’s a big thing to me.” 

“That’s exaggerated egoism.” 

“All right. Then that’s the disease I have.” 

But it was no joke to her as she walked alone 
with the ghosts of the ancient forest. She began 
to look up at the stars asking what the morality 
of one poor little female atom did mean to them. 
How could it matter to the great progression of 
events whether she lived with Arthur Devereux 
or not? How absurd to put the importance she 
was putting into her puny problem! 

Then she went to sit with Mrs. Jack Ridge- 
field, and told herself it mattered very much. 
Jack and his wife were the unconscious antidote 
to her moral apostasy. In their house she felt 
the value of strength and ideals. They stood for 
something she felt she could never live without. 
She felt that if she lived with Arthur she would 
have to give them up. As she had been born with 
dreams of influence, born to official relations with 
the world, she knew she could never bear to lose 
that status. She was not so much afraid of the 
risk as she was of the effect of a clandestine love 
affair upon her own affections. And her affection 
for Arthur was something she would not jeopar- 
dize. This she always felt in the presence of the 
Ridgefields. 


21 6 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 


Sophie was glad to have her company. Jack 
was now usually so tired that he went early to 
bed, and as his wife was becoming rather nervy 
and sleepless, she disliked sitting up alone. They 
both urged Sidney to spend as many evenings with 
them as she could. 

And Sidney was only too glad to go there to 
have her sense of balance restored. She was 
soothed by the normal atmosphere of their little 
house. Something about Sophie quietly sewing 
for the coming baby made Sidney feel that she 
had to keep herself above suspicion for the sake 
of the babies she was to have. She knew this 
was sentimental. /She knew the fever in her 
blood despised it. She looked at little Mrs. Jack, 
and wondered if she had ever had such a temper- 
ature. 

Fortunately for her, Sidney had always loved 
being in the open air, and the delight she had 
felt from the first in the peculiar atmosphere of 
the Puhipuhi proved now to be as the shadow of 
a great rock in the weary land of her emotional 
struggles. 

One evening, when she felt in no mood to go 
to the Ridgefields, she walked across the mill 
dam out over the flat in a direction she seldom 
went, because it meant going through the village. 
But every time she came this way she meant to 
come oftener, because a mile away from the mill 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 217 

the plain dropped precipitously into a gully, and 
from the top there was a glorious view to the 
north. 

This way came the soft warm winds that 
travelled from Australia over the Tasman Sea. 
This way came storms and walls of rain. This 
way came the flocks of birds that travelled their 
mysterious way from foreign lands. The long 
valley leading to hills that were always blue on 
the horizon seemed like a finger pointing to the 
sunny north. On a clear day you could see fifty 
miles of its intermittent cultivation, its clumps 
of stiff pines, its yellow roads, its white farm 
houses, its desolate gumfield wastes. And if you 
happened to be there at the right time you could 
see the thrilling trails of smoke that followed the 
train as it made its leisurely way along to Ka- 
wakawa, its terminus in the “lonely north.” 

A wooden tramway ran into the mill dam from 
the brow of the plain, where a windlass drew logs 
up a perpendicular drop from the gully below. 
There was a camp and a dam at the bottom, and 
as Sidney sat in the fern she could hear a rough 
laugh now and then, and the sounds of an ac- 
cordion. 

She lay back, clasping her hands behind her 
head, and looked up at the rose and grey clouds 
forming out of the magic of the sunset. She had 
Iain some time when she heard the voices of men 


2 1 8 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

coming nearer. Then she heard steps on the 
sleepers. She raised herself and saw the heads 
and shoulders of Jack Ridgefield and three others 
above the fern. Something about the way they 
walked roused her curiosity. As they got out 
into the open she saw they were carrying some- 
thing under a grey blanket on a stretcher. 

She sprang up and hurried after them. If it 
was an accident she might be needed. 

Jack saw her coming, stopped the procession, 
and met her a few yards away. 

His face was white and drawn. 

“You can’t do anything, Miss Carey. I’m 
afraid we won’t get him to the hospital alive. 
I’m going to drive him right on to Whangarei.” 

“Who is it?’’ she asked, a lump in her throat. 

“John Hay. Single man fortunately. Tree 
fell on him.” And he turned back to the others. 

She stood watching them go off along the tram- 
way. Tears filled her eyes. Never in her life 
had she seen anything so powerfully appealing 
as that grey hump on the stretcher. She forgot 
all about her own problem. 

With her mood entirely changed she did not 
want to stay out any longer, but turned home- 
wards. In front of Bob’s house she met Jack. 

“Don’t tell my wife, Miss Carey. Hay was 
dead when we got to the mill. I don’t want her 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 219 

to hear to-night. Can you be with her for the 
evening?” 

“Yes, I can,” she said, willingly. 

And as she sat with Sophie embroidering her- 
ringbone stitches on tiny fine flannel gowns she 
could not keep her thoughts off the poor corpse 
that was lying somewhere in the village. 

As before, the presence of death suffocated 
her. It seemed incredible that she and Sophie 
could sit there unconcerned, working as if nothing 
had happened. 

When Jack came in his wife noticed that some- 
thing was the matter, but she said nothing. She 
had learned already she could help her tired hus- 
band most by leaving obvious remarks unsaid. 

But when he was gone to bed she voiced her 
feeling to Sidney. 

“Something has happened,” she said. “And 
Jack isn’t telling me because he thinks I shall 
worry. Aren’t men funny? They think we do 
not see through them?” 

Sidney smiled into her beautiful soft eyes. 

“Yes, they are funny,” she said, and would 
have given her soul to talk out to Sophie. She 
was so sure there was a fount of wisdom behind 
those eyes. “But I’m glad we see through them. 
It would be so much worse if they saw through 
us.” 


220 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

“Yes, that would be awful, wouldn’t it?” 
laughed Sophie softly. 

And Sidney wondered what secret thoughts 
lay behind that remark. 

She hardly slept that night. The grey hump 
on the stretcher haunted her. She could not 
have told what it did to her, but for days after- 
wards she forgot she was an object drifting on 
a great river of impulse, for she was absorbed in 
the wonder of the stream itself, in the mystery 
of its origin and of its end. 


CHAPTER XXI 


One night the following week, as she was fin- 
ishing her supper at the Mackenzie’s, Jack 
dashed in without a word of apology. 

“Miss Carey, please come with me at once,” 
he called sharply, without further explanation, 
and leaving Tom Mackenzie to follow to find 
out what had happened, Sidney ran after him. 

She had gone cold, thinking at once of an ac- 
cident to Mrs. Jack. But he turned towards the 
mill. 

“We’ve just fished Bessie Hardy out of the 
dam,” he said as they ran. “She’s alive, I’m 
afraid. Much better if she’d been dead, and now 
we have to try to save her.” 

“Oh, heavens!” she gasped. 

The village had learned that week that Bill 
Hardy’s eldest girl, who was fifteen, was going 
to have a child. The cook’s wife, who had been 
the first to suspect it, had spread the news. Sid- 
ney heard it from Mrs. Mackenzie the same eve- 
ning that Bob Lindsay told Jack. 

When she had gone afterwards to sit with 
Sophie she found Jack there in a white rage. He; 


221 


222 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

had just come from breaking the news to Bill, 
who had had no suspicion of it. Mrs. Bill was 
still away. Nobody had heard of her since she 
had gone off in the spring. 

“Hell!” Jack had growled. “I’ll wring the 
neck of the man if I get hold of him. And I’ll 
be sorry for him when Bill gets at him.” 

And he had gone to bed in no mood to sleep. 

“Poor Jack,” said Sophie. “He does have to 
do horrid things. He hated like anything to tell 
Bill, but he knew he would rather hear it from 
him than anyone else. He left him with poor 
Bessie trying to find out who the father is.” 

But poor Bessie, fearing for her lover, would 
not tell, and no one seemed to have a suspicion. 
For two days Jack and the men he trusted had 
tried to find out. 

And now Bessie, a mild colourless girl, who 
had never shown a spark of initiative, astonished 
everybody by this act of desperation. She had 
chosen her time after the mill closed, when the 
village was at supper, and before the night watch- 
man went on. She walked half way across the 
footbridge of the dam to where the water was 
deepest, and jumped in. 

By chance Alec Graham had been working 
after time, and as he stood in his yard washing 
the worst grease off his hands before going in- 
side he saw her. Calling to his wife to go to 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 223 

tell Jack Ridgefield he dashed for the dam. He 
was a good swimmer, and before Jack and Bob 
Lindsay got to the landing, where a boat was 
kept to aid men who fell off the logs, he had 
found Bessie, and was swimming with her towards 
the mill. 

They spread her on the landing, and Alec be- 
gan what he knew of restorative measures. 

A group from the kitchen had gathered before 
Jack and Sidney got there. 

It fell back as they arrived, and she set to 
work. 

“Has anyone been to tell Bill?” asked Jack 
at once. 

Nobody had. 

Sidney gave him an eloquent glance as he 
turned to go himself. As she worked over Bes- 
sie’s limp body, with help from Alec, she listened 
curiously to the remarks that were muttered 
round. There were curses for the absent Mrs. 
Bill, and for the man who had seduced poor 
Bessie, and much pity for her and Bill. But there 
were those who said that Bill’s wrath had driven 
her to it. 

Jack Ridgefield did not return for half an 
hour, and then he came alone. The crowd that 
had gathered would have been delighted to know 
what Bill said and how he looked, but they were 
doomed to everlasting ignorance on the subject. 


224 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

Nobody ever learned what had passed between 
the two men. It was known next day that Bill 
had gone off, presumably to get drunk. He was 
away a week. 

“How is it?” asked Jack, leaning down over 
Sidney. 

“She’s alive. We’ll get her round all right.” 

Although she was tired she refused to be re- 
lieved. 

“We’ll need a stretcher,” she said. “Don’t 
you think we’d better take her to my place? I 
can look after her better than anyone else. It 
won’t hurt me to sit up with her to-night.” 

“That’s good of you. It would be the best 
arrangement,” he answered. 

And so Bessie was carried to Sidney’s house 
and put into Sidney’s bed. 

But that was not the day’s end of the little 
drama. 

Jack had scarcely finished his belated supper 
before one of his trusted mill workers came to 
see him. 

“I think I’ve a line on Bessie’s man, boss,” he 
said. 

“Go ahead,” said Jack, his face hardening. 

“Sandy Kinney.” 

“What! That kid!” He realized at once it 
was no case for the wringing of necks. 

“I’m sure of it. He went white when he heard 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 225 

she had jumped in the dam. I was watching him. 
He’s been looking rummy for days. And now 
he’s changing into his best clothes, and says he’s 
going down to Whakapara for the evening. I 
wouldn’t mind betting he’s going to clear out.” 

“Go and stop him, by force if necessary. Tell 
him I want him. No, I guess I’ll come with you. 
We’ll go down past the school, in case he has 
started.” 

And, indeed, when they reached the tramway, 
Sandy Kinney was just emerging from the canyon 
of timber stacks. 

“Why, Sandy, are you going to a party?” asked 
Jack lightly. 

“I guess so,” mumbled Sandy. But he could 
not look his boss in the eyes. 

“Sandy,” Jack put his hand firmly on his 
shoulder, “you’re running away because you’re 
afraid to meet Bessie Hardy.” 

The poor youth who had no power to deceive 
a man like Jack was caught. 

Ridgefield nodded to his worker, who went off. 

“Had Bessie told you about the baby?” he 
asked. 

Sandy shook his head. 

“She hadn’t! But you’d heard?” 

Sandy nodded. 

“Why didn’t you go to see her at once?” 

“I dunno.” 


226 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

“I do. You were scared?” 

Sandy nodded. 

“You’re twenty-two years old, I believe?” 

Sandy nodded again. 

“Do you happen to know the law on the sub- 
ject of getting girls under sixteen into trouble?” 

Of course Sandy did not. 

“Well, Sonny, what you’ve done is a crime 
under the law, and you will go to gaol unless you 
are willing to marry Bessie.” 

Sandy went white and shrivelled up. 

“You needn’t be scared, Sandy. I’ll help you. 
You come along with me and talk it over.” 

Two hours later Jack stepped on to Sidney’s 
verandah and spoke her name quietly. She was 
sitting with Mrs. Mackenzie beside Bessie, who 
had recovered consciousness, but was still too 
weak to talk. 

“You have someone with you?” he asked, as 
she opened the door. 

<f Yes, Mrs. Mackenzie.” 

“Then you could come out for a bit. I want 
to talk to you.” 

“We have a wedding on our hands now, Miss 
Carey,” he began, grimly. “I’ve found Bessie’s 
lover — Sandy Kinney, you know, the lanky red 
boy who feeds the timber ends into the waste 
trucks. He’s a bit soft.” 

“What! You would have them marry!” 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 227 

“Certainly. I've told Sandy it’s that or gaol 
for him. A fine set of alternatives, eh? But 
he’s willing enough now that I’ve got him used 
to the idea. And I’ve told him I will put up a 
shanty for them and raise his pay. Now I want 
you to talk to Bessie as soon as she is well 
enough, and advise the poor kid.” 

“Advise her!” interrupted Sidney. “My 
heavens ! I’m so capable of advising her, aren’t 
I?” 

“Look here, Miss Carey, these poor kids don’t 
know what they want. They will do anything 
they’re told. She’s probably willing enough to 
marry him anyway.” 

“But think of the responsibility of mating two 
such people! And she’s only fifteen!” 

“I know. And think of all the children they 
will have, which is much worse. But they’re com- 
ing to it anyhow. Unmarried, Bessie will be se- 
duced every year by somebody, now she has 
started, and Sandy will find somebody, if some- 
body doesn’t find him. It’s one set of legitimate 
idiots against two sets of illegitimate ones, to put 
it baldly. I really think we had better marry 
them, Miss Carey. And there is Bill, too, to be 
considered.” 

There was no refuting the grim logic of his 
argument. 

“What a situation!” she said. 


228 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

“Common enough,” he answered. 

“But surely they ought to be considered. 
They ought to see each other and come to it 
themselves. I think it would be awful to make 
her marry him if she does not want to. She’d 
be better in a home for the rest of her life.” 

“She is not defective enough for that. Don’t 
worry, Miss Carey. They will be as happy as 
most people.” 

And next morning, when she talked to Bessie, 
Sidney saw he was right. The poor child bright- 
ened at once when she was told that Sandy would 
marry her, and that she should have a home of 
her own. Sidney kept her for two days. Bessie 
was afraid of her father, but she went home when 
Jack told her he was away and that it would be 
all right when he came back. 

He told everybody to look out for the return 
of Bill and to let him know at once about the 
marriage. He rightly guessed that it would make 
all right as far as he was concerned. 

Jack set men to work at once on a three- 
roomed cottage. He engaged a Methodist min- 
ister. Sidney said they should be married in her 
house, and she and Mrs. Mackenzie made Bessie 
a blue silk wedding dress, and went to Whaka- 
para on Saturday to get her a few clothes. 

“The poor child shall have her little thrill out 
of it if we can manage it,” said Sidney to Sophie. 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 229 

‘‘It will probably be the last she will ever get.” 

They were married two weeks after the acci- 
dent, Sidney, Jack and Bill being the only people 
present. Jack gave them money to go away for 
two weeks. 

When the pair returned there was enough in 
their shanty to start them. Most of the village 
had found something that could be spared. On 
their arrival Jack and Sidney went together to 
welcome them, and he preached them a little 
sermon about trying to get on together, and told 
them if they were in any trouble to come to him. 
It was the kind of thing that suited their intelli- 
gence and their emotions, and in spite of what the 
cynics might say it did them good. 

“Poor kids,” he said to Sidney afterwards, 
“somebody will have to look after them all their 
days.” 

This event took Sidney’s thoughts off herself, 
and helped to restore her balance. It did more 
for her than a year’s moralizing would have done. 

She talked a lot about it to Arthur, and was 
glad to find that he got all the light and shade 
in it as she had. He had wanted to go to the 
wedding, but she told him neither she nor Jack 
would pander to his vulgar curiosity. But she 
gave him a vivid description of it afterwards. 

“I wish you could have seen Jack Ridgefield 
there,” she said. “He was stunning. Indeed, 


2 3 o THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

he was through the whole business. He knows 
what to say to people. He’s so simple and kind. 
And I used to think him hard.” 

“Look here, woman, you’ve done nothing but 
talk about Ridgefield lately. I’m going to be 
jealous now.” 

He pretended to be serious. 

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Arthur. Anybody 
would admire Jack Ridgefield.” 

He looked at her with a smile. 

“My dear, you’re half in love with Jack. He’s 
the alternative to me. You’ll always be liable to 
turn from my type to his type. If you don’t 
know it now you will some day. You’re complex 
enough to want us both. Sometimes I wonder 
if I’ll be able to hold you.” 

“Why, Arthur!” She was astonished and dis- 
turbed by his insight. 

He laughed. 

“Don’t let it worry you, child. We won’t cross 
that bridge till we come to it.” 

But for days she thought over what he had 
said. 

Then she received a note from Arthur telling 
her he was off to Auckland to meet a friend from 
England, and expected to be away at least two 
weeks. He hoped, when he returned, he said, 
to have definite news of the date of his marital 
freedom. 


CHAPTER XXII 


Sidney had seen the first time she went to 
visit Mana that she, too, was going to have an- 
other baby. There was an epidemic of babies 
that autumn. Mrs. Mackenzie told Sidney she 
had noticed that it often happened that way. 

When Arthur had returned at the end of the 
summer she had told him, and said she supposed 
they could not now go together to sing there, and 
he had agreed that probably Mana would prefer 
not. She had ridden up herself several times, 
for her delight in Mana and her music had never 
waned. 

Mana’s baby was born two weeks before Bessie 
jumped into the dam. Sidney had not yet seen 
her since the event, and the week that Arthur 
went back to Auckland she told the children to 
tell her she would ride up that Saturday or Sun- 
day. But as Mrs. Jack was very unwell Sidney 
stayed with her most of the two days, and did 
not set out for the Joyous Valley till the Monday 
afternoon. 

She took her horse as usual to Mana’s stable. 
From the end of the building there stretched a 


231 


232 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

line of washing. Sidney’s eye was caught by the 
garments nearest her. 

Every scrap of colour left her face as she 
stared at them. They were a pair of fine blue 
silk pajamas, of a most unusual shade, and she 
knew only too well where she had seen them be- 
fore. 

She stood with her mouth open as if she had 
been stricken by an angry god. At last she stag- 
gered back, fearing someone might be watching 
her. She drove her fingers into her temples, set- 
ting her teeth till her gums ached. In a minute 
she was so nauseated with pain that she thought 
she would be sick. She felt she could not go to 
the house, she could not face Mana. 

She remembered her baby was only about a 
month old. The facts of the situation repulsed 
her to an overwhelming disgust. Her one idea 
was to get out her horse and fly from the whole 
thing. To go madly somewhere, anywhere, so 
that she could stop thinking about it. 

She was forced to make a desperate effort at 
control by the sight of Rangi coming towards her 
through the garden. 

Fortunately Rangi was one of those comfort- 
able people who see only objects, and never the 
qualities or moods of objects. 

“Oh, Miss Carey, I saw you ride down,” she 
began when she was some yards away. “Mana 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 233 

has been sick since yesterday. She ate something 
that did not agree with her, and she was up most 
of the night. She’s asleep now, and I don’t like 
to disturb her.” 

Sidney was so relieved she could have cried. 

“Never mind, Rangi. I could not have stayed 
long. Mrs. Ridgefield has been ill, too. I’ve 
been up with her.” She meant this to explain 
her white face. “Tell Mana I came, and that 
I’m sorry she’s ill.” 

Her voice sounded calm, and she was sure 
Rangi noticed nothing. She made a remark about 
the long autumn, turned to the stable, got out 
her horse, gave one quick look at the fatal pa- 
jamas, and with a good-bye to Rangi, rode off. 

Sidney thought before, when she had heard 
Arthur was married, that she had plumbed the 
depths of human misery and despair, and that 
never again could she go through such mental 
agony. 

But the thought of losing him then was nothing 
to the knowledge that she had to cast him off 
now, for since the first renunciation she had 
added to him a vast number of things that she 
was to get with him, and how much those things 
meant to her she had had no idea till now. 

But in the first hours it was the deception that 
stunned her, the insult of the long-lived lie. She 
told herself she had been right in the beginning, 


234 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

that she should have gone by her own suspicions 
and intuitions. She was terrified by the decep- 
tion, terrified that she had been taken in to this 
extent. What had become of her knowledge of 
character? She still thought it was what she 
called character that prevented people doing such 
things. How was she ever to trust anyone again? 
What did she have to guide her? 

Her vanity was stung to death, her egoism 
bruised beyond repair. And her jealousy was 
aroused to a frenzy of which she had never 
dreamed. She hated Arthur. She hated Mana. 
She could have killed them both. She was ap- 
palled by her own anger. 

She rode on and on, her passion growing. She 
had told Mrs. Mackenzie she might not be home. 
She was thankful that she had hours ahead of 
her, hours in which to rage. 

Everything about Arthur now rose up to wit- 
ness against him. What a fool she had been to 
trust that easy tongue ! She saw that his very 
responsiveness was a poison spot. Of course he 
would be a fool in the hands of any woman. 
Hadn’t he shown her how easily he would have 
succumbed to her? 

Here a horrible thought confronted her. Had 
she driven him to Mana because she would not 
yield? Then she told herself that if he were 
that kind of man the sooner she knew it the 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 235 

better. She was thankful she had found it out 
in time. In a year or two from now she would 
have got over it. But married to him she would 
have had to face it for ever. 

She told herself she would never see Arthur 
again. She would write and tell him what she 
had found out. She could not see a glimmer of 
excuse for him. Her reaction was simply one of 
fury, jealousy and disgust. 

It was not until she had been in bed for some 
time that the horror of self pity was added to 
swell the strenuousness of her emotions. She 
thought one by one of the things she was going 
to lose with Arthur, and the sight of them filing 
away into shadows in her mind was too much 
for her. Her anger broke into tears of desola- 
tion. 

She woke from a doze in the morning, at first 
unable to realize what had happened to her. Her 
head ached dreadfully, her eyes were swollen, her 
limbs stiff. Then remembering, she buried her 
face in the pillow and wished she could die. She 
wondered if she could not stay away from school. 
But she knew that would bring an avalanche of 
inquiry down upon her. Even if she did not go 
to the Mackenzies’ as usual for breakfast she 
knew someone would come at once to see if she 
were ill. She could not escape the eyes of the 
village. 


236 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

Mechanically she got up and looked at her 
face in consternation. She saw at once she would 
have to be ill with something. A night of tooth- 
ache and neuralgia would have to be her ally. 
She was thankful that no one would have the 
least idea what was the matter with her, not even 
Jack, she told herself. 

Her toothache went unquestioned. It agitated 
almost the whole village. Every remedy known 
to the inhabitants had been left at her house be- 
fore night. Jack and Bob insisted that she take 
the afternoon off. Mrs. Jack made poultices 
which she could not refuse to take. Mrs. Mack- 
enzie was sure she had an abscess, and said she 
ought to have a doctor. Sidney had to laugh 
that night as she surreptitiously emptied out 
parts of the various bottles that had been lent 
to her. It was the one glimmer of humour in the 
Cimmerian darkness of her dull despair. 

She dragged through the next days as people 
do who know they have nothing to live for and 
who curse the useless instinct that keeps them 
going. More than anything she was filled with 
a fear that this kind of thing would happen to 
her again. As she became more able to think 
about it she could not see how she could have 
avoided this horrible disenchantment. She re- 
fused to give up her illusions that there were 
wonderful men somewhere in the world who 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 237 

would never behave as Arthur had done. She 
was sure Jack Ridgefield would not. 

As the days passed she did not write to Arthur. 
She felt she wanted the satisfaction of telling him 
face to face what she thought of him. But there 
were times when she was afraid to meet him, 
when she feared he would explain this away, that 
he would talk her round. Telling herself she 
would never get the truth from him she made a 
sudden decision on the Saturday morning that 
she would go up and face Mana that afternoon 
with her discovery and see what she had to say. 

The sunlight shone as happily as ever upon the 
Joyous Valley, but Sidney saw nothing but gloom 
in it as she stopped to open the gate. As she did 
not intend to stay long, she decided to leave her 
horse there. She walked on down the path see- 
ing and hearing no one. Mana’s children had 
driven with Rangi to the mill store for groceries. 
There was not a sound about the cottage. 

Sidney hoped Mana was not asleep. She had 
come screwed up to ask questions that she wanted 
answered then and there. Her one idea now was 
to shake this thing off and be done with it. 

Nothing moved as she neared the house. On 
the verandah she saw the new baby’s perambula- 
tor. As she had never seen a tiny Maori baby 
she stepped curiously up to it, and moved back 
the cover. 


23 8 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

Then she started back as if she had been shot, 
and everything went black around her. 

She had no need now to see Mana, no need 
to ask any questions. Her answer was there. 
She forced herself to look at it again. There was 
no mistaking it. 

The baby was white. 

Sidney staggered off the verandah and through 
the garden, praying that no one had seen her. 
She heard no sound as she walked on to her horse. 
Nobody had seen her. 

Until this moment she had had some vague 
submerged hope that something would explain 
away the pajamas. She had considered that there 
might be more than one pair of pajamas in the 
world of that peculiar blue, and that by some 
chance some one of Mana’s male relatives might 
own them. And even while she had told herself 
that this was a thousand times improbable she 
had still cherished a shred of a notion that it was 
possible. 

Now she knew. And her future with Arthur 
was an empty dream. He was the father of 
Mana’s child. He was living with her again. 
For a year his life had been a piece of the clever- 
est deception and all his words to Sidney false 
and meaningless. It hurt her afresh to think 
she could not now look back with pleasure on a 
single hour spent with him. If he had died she 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 239 

would have had warm memories, but now every 
minute was blackened with perfidy. She was 
stunned again by this revelation of duplicity. 

She determined now to write at once. On no 
account would she ever see him again. 

Arthur had been away two weeks. He had 
written to her twice in that time; at first a long 
and entertaining letter glowing between the lines 
with his feeling for her, and then a shorter one 
asking why she had not written. 


CHAPTER XXIII 


For a few days Sidney’s mind was untroubled 
by indecision, except that she put off writing to 
Arthur. 

It never occurred to her to doubt that this 
one chapter of her life was closed. In ways she 
was right. She had left behind for ever one 
phase of her evolution. She was to look back 
afterwards and be thankful that sentimentality 
was killed in her so suddenly that a healthy 
cynicism born of this trying period was to save 
her from long-dragged-out funeral services over 
departed dreams. The sharp lance of disillusion 
had gone deep, leaving no roots of blind faith 
to sprout again. 

She was determined never to allow herself to 
be hurt in the future as she had been. And she 
saw that to avoid that she must never expect 
again what she had expected. 

Instinctively she turned to unchangeable things 
to help her, to the night, the stars, the slumbrous 
stumps browsing upon their past. That follow- 
ing week, too, she was helped by something else. 

The autumn had been exceedingly hot and dry. 

240 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 241 

The area round the mill and the village had been 
more carefully burnt than usual. Jack had 
doubled his night watch. But the menace of fire 
came on him from a source he could not control. 

In the middle of the week it began in a gully, 
fifty miles away, from a fire left by picnickers, 
and a rising wind blowing incessantly from the 
northeast had fanned it into an ever-growing 
danger. Men were sent from various directions 
to try to beat it out, but it got beyond them. It 
broke across the Ridgefield boundary in spite 
of all the help that Jack could organize to stop 
it. And on the Saturday morning it had become 
so imminent and serious that he closed the mill 
and ordered all hands to concentrate on the bush 
camps, the tramways, the dams and the logs in 
the creeks. 

The mill and the village were fairly safe from 
outside attack. Jack was more afraid of careless 
smokers there than he was of flying sparks. But 
the whole place was on its guard. The curious 
loyalty that in time of danger warms the heart 
of the man born to lead rewarded Jack Ridge- 
field as he rode from place to place, keeping 
watch and shifting his forces as circumstances de- 
manded. 

On the Saturday morning the smoke was so 
dense that Sidney could hardly see the mill chim- 
neys. She felt very deeply the suspensive danger 


242 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

in the air, and was glad to feel it, glad to feel 
anything that would help her to forget herself. 
She walked over to Sophie before breakfast to 
learn if anything had happened in the night. 

Little Mrs. Jack was more concerned about the 
small amount of sleep her husband had had than 
she was about the probable loss of a dam or two. 
Seeing she was worried about him Sidney decided 
to spend the day with her and help her to forget. 
Jack had gone off to the ranges saying he would 
not be home before night, if then. He had left 
Bob and Alec Graham and Tom Mackenzie to 
watch the mill and the tramway over the flat to 
the drop. This tramway and the camp and dam 
below it were the nearest points menaced by the 
flames. About the middle of the afternoon one 
of Sidney’s pupils, Mary James, a girl of nine 
years, who had always had the air of carrying the 
world on her shoulders, came to the Ridgefields’ 
looking for Sidney. She brought a note scrawled 
in pencil from her mother. 

“Dear Teacher,” it said, “I am very sick. My 
baby is seven days old, and my sister had to leave 
me yesterday as mother is ill. I am now alone 
and I am afraid. The smoke is all round me and 
I cannot walk yet. Is there anyone who could 
come and help me? Mollie James!” 

“Good heavens!” exclaimed Sidney, looking 
into the oblivion beyond the village. 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 243 

The Jameses lived two miles up the creek. They 
were not mill people. Mr. James was a govern- 
ment surveyor, away from home a good deal. 

Sidney turned to Sophie. 

“I’ll see if Bob can suggest anything, and if 
there is no one else to go I will.” 

She turned with Mary to the store. 

“Christmas!” exclaimed Bob, when she told 
him. “I can’t spare a man. I’ve just got back 
from the drop. They’re fighting fire over there 
now down in the gully below, and it will take 
them all their time to save the camp and the logs 
in the dam. There’s hardly a scrap of water 
there. And there isn’t a man left here but the 
two watchmen.” 

“Well, I could drive for her,” said Sidney. 

“You couldn’t get up that side of the creek 
with a vehicle now. The track’s too bad. You’d 
have to get her over this side. But I have not 
got a horse left anyway.” 

“Well, for heaven’s sake, what am I to do? I 
can’t carry her and the baby. Send a woman or 
a boy down to Whakapara for a horse and buggy. 
Can’t you do that?” 

“Yes, that’s the only thing I can do. You get 
on up, Miss Carey, and get her over the creek if 
you can. I’ll get somebody up to you before 
night.” 

“Is the fire really near the creek?” she asked. 


244 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

“Up there? I don’t know. A lot of it may be 
just smoke.” 

Sidney looked about her very doubtfully as she 
hurried on with Mary. The child knew every 
inch of the way, as she came by it to school. It 
was the main creek road leading to the ranges. 
Sidney had ridden it several times. 

Presently Mary took a track leading to the 
creek which ran in many places parallel to the 
road. They crossed easily, stepping from one 
to another of the logs that had been left by the 
last tripping. The smoke here was so dense that 
they could hardly see the house on the other side, 
though it was only a couple of chains from the 
bank. 

Sidney found the poor mother frantic. She 
had dragged herself out on to the verandah, and 
lay there on a mattress, the baby beside her. She 
was gasping for breath. 

The heat round the house startled Sidney. She 
could not tell how near the flames might be. She 
listened anxiously, not realizing how desperate 
the situation would have been if she could have 
heard the fire coming on. 

When she found out that Mrs. James had had 
food before Mary left for the mill she decided 
to get her over the creek at once. 

“But what about the house, Miss Carey?” ob- 
jected the sick woman. 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 245 

“We must leave the house, Mrs. James,” she 
said firmly. “I cannot stop it from being burned 
if the fire comes on. But I can save you. Now 
there is no time to be lost. We must get over 
the creek as soon as we can. When we get over 
I’ll see what we can do next.” 

It almost seemed as if Mrs. James would pre- 
fer to be burned, she was so reluctant to leave 
her possessions, but bit by bit Sidney got her to 
the edge of the creek, while Mary carried the 
baby. Then Mary went for a fan to keep the 
flies off her mother, and an umbrella to keep the 
glare from her, while Sidney dragged the mat- 
tress to the bank. After a rest they began the 
slow crawling from log to log. 

When she was nearly over Mrs. James fainted. 
Fortunately Mary knew where her mother kept 
the brandy. She ran for it. Sidney gave the un- 
conscious woman a good dose, and leaving Mary 
to fan her and hold the baby she dashed back to 
the house for a bucket of water and towels. She 
bathed Mrs. James’ face and slapped her chest, 
and when she had come to, Sidney dragged the 
mattress to her and got her on to it, deciding that 
as they were nearly over she had better rest here 
for a while. 

As soon as she could speak Mrs. James began 
to mourn her possessions. Couldn’t they save 
some things? So leaving her on the log with the 


2 46 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

baby under the umbrella, Sidney and Mary began 
a race back and forth for clothes and silver, and 
ornaments and even furniture. Sidney had never 
been so hot in her life. The perspiration poured 
from her and poured from Man/. She developed 
a swift new emotion — a profound admiration for 
Mary. The child knew everything her mother 
valued, knew where to find it, and was consumed 
with a passion to save it. 

Presently the logs near Mrs. James were cov- 
ered with a strange assortment of articles, and 
Sidney said firmly it was all they could hope to 
get across the creek before dark. She was 
alarmed still about the heat which seemed to in- 
crease even though the sun were going down. 

She sat down to draw breath before buckling 
to the task of getting Mrs. James on another 
stage. 

Suddenly her heart ceased to beat and, in spite 
of the heat, her blood ran cold. She started up, 
her head set like an animal’s at the first suspicion 
of an approaching enemy. She distinctly heard 
a vibration on the air, and then an intermittent 
thud, thud, thud, resounding weirdly round her 
in the smoke. 

“My God! The dams! They’ve tripped 
them!” she gasped under her breath. 

She gave one wild look round. Not far from 
the bank on the safe side was a large kauri stump. 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 247 

She saw that it would hold them all, and would 
keep them out of the water. It was the only pos- 
sible thing. 

“Mrs. James,” she said, trying to keep her 
voice steady, “we must move at once, and get on 
to that stump; see? We can manage if you keep 
calm. You must not faint. Take this brandy. 
You carry the baby, Mary.” 

With help Mrs. James managed it, but fainted 
again when they got there. Sidney rushed back 
for the brandy, and the bucket of water, and the 
towels and the fan. Then, while Mary bathed 
her mother’s face she managed to save the mat- 
tress, and a bag of silver, and several bundles of 
clothes before the flood came roaring round the 
bend. 

Gasping herself, Sidney dropped on the stump, 
her ears booming, her head whirling, her throat 
dry, her limbs trembling like reeds under her. 
For a few minutes all she could feel was that 
they were safe, and that the water would cool 
the air. 

When she raised herself she saw Mary’s face 
stoically set against the tears that would ooze 
from her eyes, a white strained terrified face. 
But Mary was holding the baby, and fanning her 
mother, as she had been told to do. The sight 
of her almost upset Sidney, and she carried a 
vivid memory of the child’s frozen courage with 


248 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

her all through life. A strange plant to blossom 
in such an atmosphere ! 

Sidney set herself at once to reassuring her. 
But Mary was not only afraid. She had seen two, 
chairs that her mother prized and several other 
things carried off on the backs of the reckless 
rollicking logs never to be seen again, and all the 
pathos of lost possessions disturbed her little soul 
as she anticipated her mother’s grief. And then, 
very unfortunately, she thought of the cow, left 
behind to be burned. 

Mrs. James recovered a little and for some 
time Sidney did her best to comfort them both. 
But she began to be terribly uneasy. They were 
marooned upon the stump. The flood stretched 
beyond them over the fern, and she knew that if 
many dams had been tripped it would last all 
night. And though now she had no fear of fire, 
she began to be afraid of the thickness of the 
smoke. It became harder to breathe. She kept 
a wet napkin over Mrs. James’ face, and watched 
the baby anxiously. In the growing dusk she got 
more and more alarmed. 

She saw she must send Mary back to the mill 
with a desperate call to Bob for immediate help. 
She tried the water, and was relieved to find it 
only a foot deep, and that the current would not 
carry her off her feet. Telling Mary what she 
wanted her to do and say, she carried her out to 
the road. 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 249 

There another inspiration seized her. 

“Do you think you could carry the baby to the 
mill, Mary?” she asked. “I’m afraid it won’t be 
able to breathe this thick air much longer.” 

And Mary said she could. Sidney went back 
for the baby. 

After carefully repeating her message, and 
primed with the stimulus of her praise, Mary set 
off, a heroic little figure fading away in the smoke. 

For a minute Sidney looked after her, her eyes 
dimmed. She was herself happier than she had 
been for two weeks. She had completely forgot- 
ten her own tragedy. And in the intensity of 
that danger she was aware of feelings much more 
significant than any self pity. 

One has learnt much when one knows that 
there are other things in the world worth feeling 
besides love and hate. 

Sidney waded back to the stump, and began 
again to make air for Mrs. James. 

She had strange reflections upon the uncertainty 
of life and the foolishness of anger as she sat 
there waving a wet cloth back and forth over the 
semiconscious woman. 

The logs hurtled by her like mad monsters. 
The roar of the water drowned every other 
sound. The smoke grew denser, and now she be- 
gan to see the glow of fire all along the northern 


250 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

and eastern horizon. It grew harder and harder 
for her to breathe. 

She could easily have saved herself, but she 
knew she could not carry or drag Mrs. James out 
to the road, and once or twice she asked herself 
why she could not leave her there. The inaction 
drove her frantic. She knew she could not desert 
a sick woman in such circumstances even if it 
meant her own death, and she wondered why hu- 
man beings had decided it was finer to lose two 
lives than one. It seemed strangely illogical. 
But one thing she knew was that she could never 
have faced Jack Ridgefield with the tale that she 
had saved herself while she left Mrs. James alone 
to suffocate upon the stump. 

Looking round her and listening every minute, 
she realized that even if help came she would not 
be able to hear any call above the creek, and that 
in the dark they might not be discovered. 

But even as she thought this she heard a faint 
cooee above the flood. 

Startled into unexpected strength, she sprang 
to her feet on the stump and answered with all 
her might. Again she heard the call, and again 
she gave it. She had a splendid thrill. This 
being rescued was a wonderful thing. 

“Mrs. James,” she shouted, “we are saved. 
Lie still, while I get out to the road. I will be 
back in a minute.” 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 251 

Jumping from the stump, she waded out to dry 
land. Through the smoke she saw the lights of 
a buggy coming from the direction of the mill. 
She cooeed again. 

The lamps grew clearer, and in her light dress 
,her figure showed up to the driver, who lashed 
his horses to a last run. 

Then Sidney heard her name shouted through 
the smoke, and a quick faintness swept over her. 

Her rescuer was Arthur Devereux. 


CHAPTER XXIV 


The steaming horses dashed up to her. 

She made a desperate effort to be calm, to quell 
her anger that Fate should have sent him, of all 
people, to spoil the excitement of that moment. 
And she was annoyed to think he had sent no 
word that he was returning that week-end. 

“Miss Carey? Hullo! Is that you?” he cried, 
pulling up, desperate anxiety in his voice. 

She found herself answering shortly that it was. 

He sprang from the buggy, and seeing she was 
alone, held out his hands. 

“Thank God, Sidney, are you all right?” 

“Arthur, I can’t talk. Please fasten the horses 
and follow me. Mrs. James is very ill. Bob 
ought to have sent someone long ago.” 

Her voice was sharp. She was fiercely irri- 
tated by his aggressive cheerfulness. In that in- 
stant he seemed so remote from her mood as to 
be like some stranger intruding his feelings upon 
her. And in the face of what she had just gone 
through the personal element seemed trivial be- 
yond expression. 

He looked quickly at her. The light of the 
252 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 253 

buggy lamps showed him enough of her haggard 
face to alarm him. He saw at once she had had 
a terrible experience. He turned quickly to the 
horses, and tied them to a stump, a most unneces- 
sary proceeding, as not for worlds would they 
have moved for hours if they could have helped 
it. Sidney noticed the foam on their flanks, heard 
the panting of their nostrils, and knew he had 
driven as if he had had the devil behind him. 
But that did not stir her. 

She turned into the flood, he following. There 
was just light enough for them to distinguish the 
stump as a shadow in the smoke. 

“Did you meet Mary?” she shouted. It was 
the only thing she wanted to know. 

“I did,” he called back. “About half a mile 
from the mill. She scared me into fits about you. 
I don’t think Bob realized the seriousness of the 
situation at all. But he had a good deal to think 
about down there.” 

When they reached the stump Mrs. James did 
not seem to understand that she was being saved. 
With great difficulty Arthur got her into his arms. 
Sidney took the water and the brandy and fol- 
lowed him in silence. Out by the road he put the 
sick woman down in the fern, and Sidney dropped 
beside her. She had no need to simulate weari- 
ness. She was herself almost beyond speech. 

But Arthur had an uneasy feeling that exhaus- 


254 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

tion alone did not explain something in her man- 
ner. She had shown absolutely no relief, no glad- 
ness at being rescued from that precarious posi- 
tion. That seemed to him almost inhuman. 

But he said nothing as he ploughed into the 
flood again for the mattress. 

As Sidney sat mopping Mrs. James’s face she 
heard the sounds of a horse pounding along the 
road. It seemed to bound out of the smoke, and 
before she could get up it reared above her. 

“Miss Carey,” shouted Jack Ridgefield. 

“Yes, yes, all right.” She sprang to her feet, 
alive and grateful beyond words for his dramatic 
appearance. 

“What’s all this?” he cried, dismounting. “I 
came down the short cut a while ago, and caught 
up to Mary just this side of the mill. She told 
me your message, and said someone had come on 
for you. But I wanted to be sure.” 

“Yes, Mr. Devereux. I haven’t had time to 
ask him why. Was Mary all right?” 

Somehow little Mary seemed to be the most 
significant person in the world just then. 

“She was. Great kid! Wouldn’t give up the 
baby. She was going to carry it to Mrs. Mac- 
kenzie’s because you had told her to. She was 
immovable. And as she was nearly there I let 
her go on. Now, where is Devereux?” 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 255 

They heard him splashing through the water 
with the last load of Mrs. James’s possessions. 

Sidney dropped down to the ground again, feel- 
ing light-headed. She said nothing while the two 
men lifted Mrs. James and the mattress and her 
things into the floor of the buggy. As in a dream 
she heard them talk. 

“How is it in the bush?” asked Arthur. 

“Pretty bad all round. The fire’s up to the 
creek in many places. I’m afraid of the dams. 
But the men are sticking fine. I’ve just run down 
to tell my wife how things are going, and then 
I’m off back to the Big Dam.” 

“I’m with you if I can help.” 

“You bet you can; thanks. Did you happen to 
hear how things are at the mill?” 

“Everybody was over at the drop, except Tom 
Mackenzie. There was a bit of a fire there, I 
believe. But they were getting it under. How 
the deuce do you do anything in this smoke?” 

“It isn’t all as bad as this. There’s a lot of 
green stuff back here. This is pretty deadly. 
How has all this happened, do you know?” 

Arthur told him what he had heard from Tom 
when he had arrived at the mill, and how he had 
raced down to Whakapara and commandeered the 
horses and the buggy. Jack looked at the flood 
and guessed something of what Sidney had been 
through. 


256 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

When they had settled Mrs. James, he turned 
to her. 

“Miss Carey, I guess you’d better get in at the 
back here too. You look as if you needed to lie 
down. How long have you been here?” 

“I don’t know?” she mumbled, now danger- 
ously near a breakdown. 

They both knew from the way she moved that 
she was done, and that she was in no mood to 
talk. 

They set off, Arthur driving slowly, for he 
knew that Mrs. James could stand little jolting. 
When they had gone half a mile Jack said he 
would go on and prepare somebody to take her in. 

Arthur turned round in his seat. Both women 
were lying prone on the mattress. He felt very 
uncomfortable about Sidney. He could not imag- 
ine that danger and exhaustion could put the 
something into her manner that he had felt there. 
But he knew it was no time to talk, and he drove 
the whole way in silence. 

The smoke grew less dense as they went on. 
When they reached the mill he made a detour 
to get on to the road leading to the store. At 
the entrance by the timber yard one of the men’s 
wives who had been told to look out for him came 
out to tell him to go to Mrs. Mackenzie’s. 

When they got there Sidney did not give him 
a chance to speak to her again. She got quickly 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 257 

out of the buggy and went into the house. Tom 
and Arthur followed with Mrs. James. 

“Mrs. Ridgefield is waiting for you, Mr. Dev- 
ereux,” said Mrs. Mackenzie. Arthur went on 
at once without attempting a meeting with Sidney. 
After he had eaten a hurried supper he arranged 
at the stable with Bill Hardy to look after the 
borrowed team for the night, and return it to its 
owner in the morning. Then, taking his own 
horse, he rode off with Jack to the Big Dam. 

He could not get out of his mind the something 
that had looked at him out of Sidney’s eyes. Had 
the anxiety been such as to daze her, he wondered, 
for she had looked at him as if she did not rec- 
ognise him. He hated to go off and leave her 
like that. And through the following hours of 
frantic energy he was haunted by the memory of 
her vacant stare. 

All day Sunday the wind continued to blow 
and the smoke to blot out the world. 

Sidney did not wake from her slumber of ex- 
haustion till affter ten o’clock. She was still stiff 
and strained, and felt a bit nauseated. As soon 
as she was dressed she went to see if Sophie had 
any more news. She heard that Mrs. James had 
been taken to the Whangarei hospital early that 
morning in a dangerous condition. Her temper- 
ature had gone up by leaps and bounds in the 


258 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

night, and Bob Lindsay had taken the responsi- 
bility of sending her off. 

Mrs. James was at death’s door for weeks, but 
finally recovered. Mrs. Mackenzie kept Mary 
and the baby till relatives were able to come for 
them. 

Sophie told Sidney that the fire over at the drop 
had been almost beaten out, and one shift of worn- 
out men was sleeping. There was a sense of 
strain everywhere, and great anxiety as to how 
they were getting on back in the bush. Every 
hour eyes were turned to the sky where the high 
wind now threatened rain. 

In the middle of the day a rider on a foaming 
horse dashed into the village with a message from 
Jack asking for any men who could be spared to 
get as quickly as possible to the Big Dam. 

A message for Sophie told her not to be 
alarmed and not to expect her husband down that 
night. 

Men who had had a few hours’ sleep were 
wakened by their wives, and, cursing the whole 
history of fire, dressed nevertheless, and went, 
with Bob at their head. 

By the middle of the afternoon there was not 
a man left at the mill but the two watchmen, Tom 
Mackenzie, who was lame and not equal to fire 
fighting, and Bill Hardy, who never left his horses 
in a crisis, never, that is, when he was sober. 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 259 

Sidney sat with Sophie the whole afternoon. 
They did not try to hide their common restless- 
ness. Sidney loathed the uselessness of women in 
such a situation. She was annoyed to think that 
the strain of the day before had been sufficient 
to reduce her to inactivity. 

She had tried to keep her thoughts off Arthur, 
but she was surprised to find that her anger 
against him was gone. In the common fear of 
the people round her she had lost 'her personal 
bitterness. 

In the evening the women gathered in little 
groups, wondering if they would get any more 
news that night. They told each other that it 
was certainly going to rain, and that the wind was 
dropping. But the smoke seemed to be as thick 
as ever. 

Sidney sat up late with Mrs. Jack. At eleven 
o’clock she went out to give a last despairing look 
at the sky. She heard somebody stumbling to- 
wards her. It was Bob Lindsay, so done up that 
he could hardly walk. 

He propped himself up on the Ridgefield back 
gate, as Sidney asked who it was. 

“Why, Bob, what’s happened?” she gasped. 

“Nothing, but I couldn’t hold out any longer, 
curse it! So Jack sent me down.” 

“How are they getting on?” 

“It’s pretty bad up there, but it will rain by 


26 o THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

morning, and if they can only hold out to-night 
they’ll save the dams. God! but I’ve never seen 
anyone go like Jack and Devereux. Didn’t know 
Devereux had it in him. And the men are great. 
They’ll keep up as long as the boss does. Any- 
thing happened here? How is the drop?” 

He spoke brokenly. 

“Some of the men are still there, that’s all I 
know,” she answered. “Then Jack will not be 
down to-night?” 

“No. But tell his wife he’s all right.” 

And Bob staggered off. 

Sidney stood a moment. His words about 
Arthur troubled her. She did not want to hear 
anything good of him. It made it so much harder 
for her to face saying to him what she meant to 
say. 

She stayed the night with Mrs. Jack. They 
lay together in the big bed, because Sophie did 
not like to be alone, and slept but little. Be- 
tween four and five in the morning Mrs. Jack 
started out of an uneasy slumber, and Sidney woke 
with her. 

“Listen,” said Sophie. 

“Rain.” , 

“Oh, thank God!” 

Sidney looked at the clock, and raised herself. 

“You lie still, Mrs. Ridgefield. I’m going to 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 261 

light the fire and get water ready. A hot bath’s 
a good thing for a tired man.” 

She started the range in the kitchen, and the 
log fire in the dining-room, filled all the kettles, 
and went back to lie down. At intervals she got 
up to tend the fires. 

By seven o’clock it was pouring, a healthy, solid 
rain equal to putting out any conflagration that 
ever burned. 

The two women dressed, looking now for Jack 
to arrive at any minute. Sidney was in the back 
porch when she saw two men in oilskins ride up 
to the fence. Something about the way they sat 
their horses startled her. They almost fell off, 
throwing the reins over the fence, and staggered, 
holding each other up, through the gate. 

Sidney gave one look at them and rushed in to 
Sophie. 

“Mr. Ridgefield and Mr. Devereux are here,” 
she said quietly. “They look dreadful, but don’t 
be frightened. They are only worn out.” 

The two scarred and shattered men stumbled 
into the kitchen. Their eyes were sunk back in 
their heads, their faces were seamed like the faces 
of old men, their figures hunched as if they had 
spine disease. They were unshaved. It was 
Monday morning and neither of them had slept 
since Friday night. 

They were incapable of any kind of greeting. 


262 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

Jack raised his hand feebly as if to ward off 
words. 

“All right,” he muttered, “bed, bed.” 

His eyes closed even as he said it. 

Sophie had already begun to help him to throw 
off his oilskin. 

And Sidney found herself doing the same thing 
for Arthur. She could not keep a gulp from her 
throat as she tore off his rain and riding coats. 
He had not looked at her with any sign of rec- 
ognition. He was unaware of her. His body 
was so strained that his mind did not act. 

Feeling his way as if he were blind, Jack stum- 
bled for his bedroom. Taking Arthur by the 
arm, Sidney led him to the sitting-room couch. 
He dropped on to it and was instantly asleep. 

As Jack fell onto his bed his lips moved. 

Sophie caught the words, “Tell Bob, holiday, 
two days,” and he was gone. 

Thinking he had fainted, she called sharply for 
Sidney. 

They decided that both men had simply 
swooned from exhaustion, and that the first thing 
they needed was to lie still. They looked help- 
lessly at them with lumps in their throats. To 
them it was a thing marvellous to tears that men 
could endure as they had done. 

“What are we to do with them?” asked Sophie 
in a whisper, looking at her husband’s inert form 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 263 

spread over her spotless bedclothes. “We can’t 
leave them like this.” 

Both men were, indeed, distressingly dirty, 
their clothes soaked with perspiration, their wet 
boots still on. 

“Of course not. We can wash them. That 
w*on’t wake them. But you mustn’t do any lift- 
ing. I’ll get Bob.” 

Bob Lindsay was just up. He went at once for 
Tom Mackenzie, and they undressed Arthur and 
Jack and got them into bed. Bob was sure they 
were all right, but as Sophie was very anxious, 
Sidney thought he had better send Bill Hardy to 
Whakapara to telephone for a doctor. So, lead- 
ing the two horses, Bob went off to the stables. 

Sophie and Sidney began to wash the faces and 
feet of their two unconscious men. 

As she washed Arthur, Sidney felt extraordi- 
narily remote from all her past experience with 
him. She could not feel that she had ever loved 
him. She did not see that she was emotion stale, 
and that it would take her days to get back her 
elasticity. She thought with astonishment that 
it was easier to cease to love a person than she 
had supposed. She felt no bitterness against 
him now at all. She felt a great pity for his ter- 
rible weariness. 

She wondered why he had come back there. 
Was it to find out how she was? Could he really 


264 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

love her? She was sorry for him if he did. But 
he would easily get over it. As for herself, she 
could not imagine why she had ever suffered about 
him. 

When she had washed him she put a hot bottle 
at his feet, which were cold. 

Then she went to get some breakfast ready for 
herself and Sophie. When Mrs. Jack had fin- 
ished with her husband, she stole out as if she 
must not make a sound. Then it struck Sidney 
that all the men in the place must be in the same 
state, and that they had heard nothing of what 
had happened in the night. 

“I’ll find out if they saved the darns. I’ll be 
back in a minute,” and putting on Jack’s oilskin 
she went out into the rain. 

The Mackenzies had heard nothing, but Mrs. 
Graham opened her back door with her finger 
on her lips. Her husband had got back from the 
bush two hours before, unable to say more than 
that all the dams were safe. Was Sidney going 
to have school? What were the mothers to do 
to keep their children quiet on such a day? 

And while she ate breakfast Sidney saw that 
the women had their job before them. Before 
she and Sophie had finished Bob returned from 
going the rounds of the village. 

Throwing off his overcoat, he sat down and 
talked in whispers, though it was unnecessary. 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 265 

No noise known to earth would have waked either 
Arthur or Jack. 

“Bill has gone for the doctor. And except for 
the cook, who came down last night, and Mac- 
kenzie and me there isn’t a man awake or likely 
to be awake before to-morrow in the whole place. 
They’re all like the boss and Devereux, done. 
You ought to see the kitchen. Most of them 
dropped into their bunks sopping wet. The 
cook’s undressing them by degrees. There’s a 
heap of soaking clothes in the middle of the floor, 
and a heap of boots. I’m going back to help him. 
But they’ve saved the dams. A good many logs 
charred, I believe, and one camp gone, but nothing 
else to speak of. But it’s the worst fight we’ve 
ever had. Now, Miss Carey, here’s a problem 
for you. The women are worried to death about 
noise. What are they to do with the kids a day 
like this? And the houses must be kept quiet.” 

She thought a moment. 

“What about collecting them all in the bowling 
green pavilion, and giving them a picnic? The 
mothers can leave the men to sleep, and look in 
at them at intervals. I’ll have school as usual 
for the bigger children, anyway.” 

“That’s the idea,” said Bob. 

The bowling green was across the creek on the 
other side of the mill, where no noise could dis- 
turb the sleeping men. 


266 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

Sidney went round to see what the mothers 
thought of the scheme. They thought exceed- 
ingly well of it. And so there began a series of 
funny little processions under umbrellas in the 
rain. When Bob had finished helping the cook 
he and Tom Mackenzie took a hand in the migra- 
tion of the children from the homes to the pavil- 
ion. By the middle of the day every young hu- 
man being was segregated. Enough food was col- 
lected from the homes and the cook for two meals, 
and mothers prepared themselves patiently to 
have their nerves torn to shreds. 

Mrs. Mackenzie and Mrs. Lindsay took in 
women with young babies who needed a fire. 
Sidney kept school with her older pupils and led 
them in procession to the pavilion for lunch and 
back after the lessons were over. 

Several times during the day she ran in to see 
Sophie. But there was nothing to do for the two 
men who lay as they had fallen that morning. 

In the afternoon the doctor arrived. He went 
the rounds deeply interested. He said he had 
never seen such an accumulation of exhaustion in 
all his life, and that there was nothing to be done 
but to let them all sleep it off. He told Sophie 
that Jack and Arthur were badly strained, that 
they might suffer from nausea, that they must eat 
carefully for a week or two, rest thoroughly be- 
fore getting back to work, have hot packs and 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 267 

massage, if possible, and be careful not to overdo 
for some time. 

Altogether it was a queer day. A hush like 
that of death hung over every house but the bowl- 
ing pavilion. 

There indeed, as the day wore on, there was 
noise enough and to spare. At first the children 
had risen to the occasion, believing this to be a 
spree designed for their entertainment, but as the 
afternoon progressed they seemed to discover the 
fraud that was being perpetrated on them and 
were consumed with a howling desire to go home. 
Every kind of device was employed to distract 
their attention. After school Sidney organized 
them into games, and heroically tried to keep 
them interested till suppertime. 

By then the mothers were wcnsi out and every 
kind of infantile cussedness was at its height. The 
evening meal provided an interlude, but the fol- 
lowing hour was a horror. Tired children 
screamed and kicked and scratched and fought 
till they were sleepy enough to be taken safely 
home. 

Sidney hated all children and all mothers for 
bearing them long before the last lot was mus- 
tered for the return. When it was all over and 
she surveyed the wrecked pavilion with its hideous 
remains of two meals she felt as if she had been 
through a war. 


268 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 


But she felt also a great satisfaction. Some- 
thing had been accomplished. The broken men 
who had stood by Jack Ridgefield had had ten 
hours of peace with the night still before them. 
She felt strangely glad as she wended her way 
back through the soaking rain to Sophie. 


CHAPTER XXV 


Sidney did not get to sleep till long after mid- 
night, partly because she was overtired and 
deeply stirred by the atmosphere of the last three 
days, and partly because she was wondering what 
on earth she was going to say to Arthur. After 
all she had never written to him, and she knew 
now she could not write. And everything that 
she had meant to say a week ago now seemed 
childish and hysterical. 

The fire had changed her. Who knows what 
it is that such experience does to one? 

Last thing that night before returning to her 
own house she had stood with Sophie to look at 
the two men. They had shown signs of life in 
the evening only by moving a little, but their 
faces were losing the ghastly strain of the morn- 
ing. For an hour the two women had put hot 
packs to their backs to ease their stiffness while 
they slept. 

Sidney wondered if Mrs. Jack suspected any- 
thing between herself and Arthur, if she knew he 
was married. Sophie had given no sign of curi- 
osity. She had not wondered aloud why he had 
269 


270 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

come back there with Jack. She had accepted his 
presence as naturally as she had her husband’s. 

Sidney did not want to meet Arthur till he was 
well. She knew the sight of him as he stumbled 
in with Jack had weakened her will. She knew 
that the fact that he had worked himself as he 
had for interests not his own had warmed her 
heart. She knew she could never be hard with 
those memories close upon her. And she told 
herself that she had to be hard, that it was all 
over, and that she must tell him as soon as pos- 
sible and be done with it. As she lay listening 
to the rain she felt tired of all feeling and wished 
she could go off somewhere where nobody knew 
her, and where she could vegetate like an animal 
for a while and rest. 

The first thing she thought of when she woke 
in the morning was how she could avoid meeting 
Arthur that day. 

She called to see Sophie on her way to the 
Mackenzies’ to breakfast. She learned that both 
men had waked and spoken and eaten a little, and 
fallen into a doze again. There was nothing she 
could do, Sophie said. 

The rain had stopped in the night, and the 
morning broke clear and fresh. Sidney met her 
pupils with a funny feeling that it was hard to get 
back to the normal round again. All day she had 
a queer feeling of blankness, of suspense. She 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 271 

looked often out of her windows, but saw no sign 
of life about the Ridgefields’. She did not want 
to go there again, and shirked it till after supper. 

Then she was surprised to find that Arthur had 
ridden home in the afternoon, leaving a note with 
Sophie for her. 

It asked her to meet him the following Satur- 
day afternoon, as usual, out on the road. He 
hoped she had fully recovered from her experi- 
ence. Pie would have called upon her if he had 
had clean clothes. 

She opened and read it before Sophie, as if it 
meant nothing. 

“Tie ought not to have gone back,” volunteered 
Sophie. “He really is not well enough to look 
after himself. We begged him to stay, but he 
was worried about his clothes.” 

Then they went in to Jack who was sitting up 
talking to Bob. 

Before he would talk he insisted on hearing 
about her experience with Mrs. James. Sidney 
made light of it, it seemed so insignificant. 

And then they all got into a mood of exalta- 
tion about the men. 

“It’s worth all the grind to have the fellows 
stick to one like that,” said Jack. “Funny thing, 
the most godless blackguards will work the hard- 
est for you in a pinch. Ordinarily they’ll slack, 
they will make mischief, but give them a fire and 


272 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

they will go till they drop. They like the excite- 
ment, I suppose. But Devereux surprised me. 
I didn’t know he had the strength. Spirit will do 
wonders for a man. And he kept the men going. 
I’m afraid, though, he’s worse knocked up than 
anybody. I know I don’t want to go through it 
again in a hurry.” 

His head fell back on his pillow. 

Sidney wondered if he had had any intention 
in talking thus of Arthur. In spite of her resolve 
that she was done with him she felt a very live 
concern about his health. And before Saturday 
came she was anxious to know how he was. 

The mill did not start again till Thursday 
morning, and Jack made it clear that no man who 
did not feel able was to return to his job, and for 
some days the work went easy. Jack himself, 
and several of his men felt the strain for weeks. 

James Ridgefield came up on the Wednesday 
night in answer to a telegram from his son, and 
went the rounds of the camps thanking the men 
for their loyalty. He was shrewd enough to 
know that if they had not paid most of them on 
a scale well above the union wages the loyalty 
might have been a doubtful quantity. But he 
realized also that appreciation, or a wise expres- 
sion of it, did a great deal to oil the machinery 
between master and man in the troubled days of 
mutual suspicion. 


CHAPTER XXVI 


At the appointed time on the Saturday after- 
noon Sidney walked out to the road to meet 
Arthur. 

She had spent an uncomfortable three days 
shirking the meeting as she had never shirked 
anything before. She did not know now what 
she was going to say to him, although she had 
rehearsed a hundred conversations. 

When she was still half a mile away she could 
see him waiting. on his horse. She had not ridden 
because she could not bear to spoil a ride, and 
she did not expect the interview to be long. 

As soon as he saw her he rode to meet her. 

“Why didn’t you ride?” he called as soon as 
she could hear. 

And then, “What’s the matter?” when he was 
near enough to see that she did not smile at him. 

“Get off, please, Arthur, and let’s walk. I’ve 
something to say to you.” 

She was relieved to find that now that she was 
face to face with him she could be cool. 

But he was more disturbed by her cold calmness 
than he would have been by any display of anger. 
273 


274 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

“W-hat’s the matter, my dear?” he askeo 
jumping down beside her. “For God’s sake say 
it and be done with it.” 

He was startled to see how ill she looked, and 
she was startled to see how ill he looked. She 
looked miserably into his eyes. 

“I’m sorry, Arthur, if I am going to hurt you. 
But it is all over between you and me. Abso- 
lutely over. I cannot stand for your lies and 
deceit. I’ve found out that you and Mana are 
living together.” 

As she was staring straight at him she saw the 
look of astonishment that animated his tired eyes. 
And she noticed that he did not appear to take 
in the force of her words. 

“My dear girl, you’re crazy. I’m not living 
with Mana, so you can’t have found out that I 
am. What nonsense have you heard?” 

The slight impatience in his tone angered her. 

“Arthur, I will never speak to you again if you 
do not make up your mind this instant to stop 
lying to me. I will not stand for it. It is an 
outrageous insult. And I tell you you cannot 
deceive me. I’m not going by what I’ve heard. 
I’m going by what I’ve seen.” 

He looked keenly at her, seeing she was deadly 
serious. For a minute he was scared that some- 
thing had happened to her mind. 

“Seen! Seen what?” he asked quietly. 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 275 

“The child. Yours and Mana’s,” she an- 
swered harshly. 

“The child!” he repeated, staring at her. 

“Yes, haven’t you seen the baby?” 

“No.” 

“Well, you might as well, as it’s yours.” 

“Mine? How do you know?” 

“It’s white,” she answered coldly. 

He was silent, thinking it was pretty hard luck 
that he and Mana should have been caught at the 
end of the liaison like that. For the moment he 
was nonplussed. He thought he had better 
make a clean breast of it at once. 

“I’m sorry, Sidney, that you should have found 
that out at this late date. I was living with Mana 
before you came, and for a while after you came. 
But when I grew to care for you I made the 
break, and by the time I told you I loved you 
it was over. I did not feel bound to tell you my 
whole past history. And I owed Mana silence. 
I never made out to you that I was a saint. I 
told you many things. As far as I see the only 
thing that concerns you is that I’ve been faithful 
to you since I told you I loved you. And it has 
not been so easy. It was not easy one night last 
week in Auckland.” 

This last sentence startled her, and she only 
half believed the rest of his story. 

“That’s just it,” she cried. “I’ve come to see 


27 6 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

that you are the kind of man who would keep 
me eternally suspicious. I cannot trust you. You 
have deceived me. You told me in the spring 
there was nothing between you and Mana, per- 
haps only a week or two after you had cast her 
off. You call that the truth. I do not. The 
time to tell me was then. If you had, I should 
have understood it. It would have hurt me, but 
I should have understood it. I am not a baby. 
I did not suppose you were a boy of sixteen. As 
a matter of fact I have never expected to marry 
an inexperienced man. I don’t know that I 
should want to. But if I can’t marry a straight 
man I’ll never marry at all. You didn’t tell me 
you were married till I found out. You don’t 
tell me this till I’ve found out. And I cannot 
believe you now. You tell me you are not living 
with Mana. I saw your pajamas on her line two 
or three weeks ago.” She finished in a white 
heat. 

“My pajamas,” he repeated quietly. He had 
waited for her to finish with a patience that in- 
tensified her exasperation. 

“Yes, your pajamas. The same blue silk pa- 
jamas that fascinated the women on the launch 
last summer.” 

A curious light, as near a smile as he dared, 
for he perceived this was a serious business, 
flickered across his eyes. 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 277 

“My dear girl, I have two pairs of those pa- 
jamas. In fact, I have three pairs.” 

“What on earth does that change?” she cried. 
“Then they were your pajamas?” 

“I suppose they were,” he said. “I must have 
left them there.” 

“Of course you left them there. And I sup- 
pose you will tell me you forgot all about them.” 
“I did.” 

“Oh, what a horrible liar you are ” 

“Oh, the devil! Sidney!” he interrupted her, 
angry now himself. “Did you ever hear of a 
man who would go around collecting his pajamas? 
Ask Mana what she was doing with them. I 
don’t know.” 

It was the first time he had ever shown anger 
with her. It filled her with a quick fear, and the 
fleeting contempt in his eyes put her in the wrong. 
He had made her feel a fool. So she got an- 
grier than ever. She turned on him, her eyes 
blazing. 

“Arthur, you evidently think this is a joke. 
You think deception and lying is a joke. You 
think a broken engagement is a joke. You don’t 
see that I believed in you. That’s the cruel part 
of it. I believed in you. And you’ve disillu- 
sioned me. I shall never be the same again. 
Oh, God! If men could only be disillusioned as 


women are. 


278 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

Her voice broke. 

They were still standing where they had met in 
the middle of the road. Arthur moved a step 
nearer her. 

“My God! Aren’t they? When I was a per- 
fectly good boy of twenty-three I had my illusions 
shattered by a woman seven years older than my- 
self. The tragedy of my life has been that like 
a chivalrous fool I married her.” 

If she had not been thinking so much of her- 
self, she would have realized what years of dis- 
enchantment lay behind his tone. 

“It’s a fine piece of justice that you should pay 
her out by disillusioning me, isn’t it?” 

He turned from her with a gesture of utter 
weariness, and for the minute she thought he was 
going to leave her. 

Then he controlled himself, and stood still. 

“Oh, for God’s sake, my dear girl, be fair. I 
know I deserve some misery for making you suf- 
fer. But it’s enough for me to see you look as 
you do. Don’t rub it in. And I tell you this 
thing was over when I showed you I loved you. 
I’ve been faithful to you since. What more could 
any woman ask?” 

“I ask more,” she said, but more gently. “I 
ask that I can trust the man I marry. Trust him 
to be straight with me. And trust him to be 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 279 

above suspicion for a few years at least, as far as 
other women are concerned.” 

“Oh, Sidney, you could never really trust any 
man to resist all kinds of temptation. You could 
only hope that he would avoid the temptation.” 

“Arthur, I won’t believe that. There are men 
one could trust anywhere.” 

“Oh, Lord ! Why will you women hang on to 
that delusion? You wouldn’t call by the name of 
man the kind of thing you could trust anywhere. 
Picture it, the anaemic, underfed, expurgated 
sissy !” 

“Yes, I picture it. Jack Ridgefield, for in- 
stance,” she answered triumphantly. 

“Oh, damn Jack Ridgefield!” he burst out. 
Then a smile crossed his eyes. 

“Well, I suppose you may as well hug that 
delusion,” he added. 

“What do you mean?” she asked sharply, with 
a sinking feeling. 

“Oh, nothing.” He was immediately sorry he 
had let that slip. 

“You did mean something,” she exclaimed. 
“Do you mean to say he is living with some- 
body?” 

“Oh, no. Not that I know of,” he answered 
quickly. “But he’s never left this place for 
months. He told me the other night he dare not 
go. That if he did the first thing he would do 


280 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

would be — well, I need not say. He could only 
be faithful to his wife by staying here and work- 
ing himself to death every day. And you don’t 
suppose he has been such a damned fool as to tell 
his wife about it, do you? Any man worth the 
name keeps things like that to himself. Why 
should we worry the women we love with our 
beastly struggles? Here, my dear, don’t, don’t. 
Oh, please, Sidney, don’t cry. Dash it all, my 
dear, I love you, and God knows I mean to be 
decent. That’s all any man can say.” 

But she turned stumbling along the road, with 
her handkerchief to her face. 

For a minute or two he stood wondering 
whether he had better leave her alone. Then he 
followed, leading his horse, and without a word 
took her arm and led her off down a track out 
of sight of the road. He tied his horse, and 
sat down beside her, took out his pipe, and began 
to smoke. 

He cursed himself for all this, and wondered 
if her love would have stood it in the beginning. 
One never knew. 

His thoughts went back to his trusting chival- 
rous youth, to his cruel breaking in, which only 
amused him now. He had learned that for the 
strong life is happier and much more amusing 
with knowledge than without it, and that the 
sooner one gets over the transition stage the bet- 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 281 

ter. The thing that he regretted most was the 
temporary eclipse that one’s sense of humour suf- 
fers during the trying period. 

He knew what Sidney was crying about. He 
knew she had fortified herself against him with 
the shining pillar of Jack Ridgefield to lean upon, 
as he had once fortified himself against one 
woman with the vision of another. He was only 
too glad that she had let him stay with her. He 
regarded that as a hopeful sign. 

Presently she grew quieter, and got to her feet. 

“I’m going home,” she said stupidly. 

“You’d better bathe your face, child, in case 
you meet somebody. There must be water near 
by. I’ll look for it.” 

Soon afterwards he called to her that he had 
found a spring. When she came up he solemnly 
handed her a clean handkerchief of his own, and 
stood back while she bathed her swollen eyes. 

Without a word they walked back to the road. 
There was just one more thing he wanted to know. 

‘Did Mana show you the baby?” he asked. 

“No. She doesn’t know I saw it.” 

“Oh! Have you seen her since? Have you 
talked to her at all?” 

“No, I have not. I’ve no desire to. I never 
wish to see her again.” 

They stood still. Arthur was wondering. 
He thought it very curious that Mana had not 


282 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 


told him about the baby. He had not seen hei 
since it was born. But she had written to him. 

He knew it was useless to say anything more 
to Sidney that day. He held out his hand. 

“I’m terribly sorry, child. Won’t you please 
forgive me this once?” His voice and his eyes 
pleaded eloquently. 

But she was too sick and tired to answer. 

He was wise enough to see it. Raising her 
cold hand to his lips, he turned to his horse, 
mounted and rode off without looking back. 

When he pulled his horse to a walk farther 
along the road he took a little jeweller’s box out 
of his pocket, opened it, and looked at the ex- 
quisite pearl and diamond ring inside. A grim 
smile twisted his mouth. 

“ ‘The best laid plans of mice and men,’ ” he 
quoted bitterly. 

Then he put it back into the pocket containing 
the proofs of his divorce that he had brought to 
show her that day. He had hoped that she would 
consent to marry him in her winter vacation, a 
month away. 


CHAPTER XXVII 


For more than an hour after he had left her 
Sidney walked up and down the road. 

She could hardly be said to be thinking. Her 
mind was a chaos of mangled mental waves that 
struggled to become thoughts and failed. As at 
first she did not really believe Arthur’s story, she 
did not begin to feel the relief she might have 
done. That his living with Mana was a thing 
back in the past did not immediately change her 
attitude. She had suffered too much of a shock 
for that. 

In that first hour she simply felt at sea with 
everything she had ever believed about human 
beings. Arthur’s words about Jack Ridgefield 
troubled her absurdly. In the curious way that 
people do when life hits them hard she limited 
her world to these two men and her smashed illu- 
sions concerning them. It was not till the next 
day that she remembered that the world was a 
considerable place, and that vast numbers of 
women seemed to be getting on very comfortably 
with men as they were. 

The thing that irritated her most in the next 
283 


28 4 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

few weeks was the training that had made her 
believe in a world of phantom men. Her dear 
sentimental aunt, married to a mild, lovable man 
who had been satisfied with her, had pictured men 
of gigantic moral proportions, St. Anthonys and 
Sir Galahads, as being quite common in the world, 
and had assured her niece that her only hope for 
happiness lay in getting one of them, and that 
she would know him by some mysterious mark 
when she saw him. 

She now cursed her foolish aunt for commit- 
ting her to such folly. And she was mad at her- 
self that after several years of meeting men freely, 
and hearing a good deal about them she should 
have remained so unsophisticated. She saw what 
a fool she must now appear to Arthur, not at all 
a consoling thought. 

When she went to see Sophie that evening she 
found that her nurse had arrived, a superior 
nurse, and an old friend of Mrs. Jack. Sidney 
was glad to feel that she would not be wanted 
there now in the evenings. She did not want to 
see Jack. She thought she was sick of the sight 
of everybody she knew. She would have given 
anything to get away somewhere alone. 

The next night she went into the schoolroom 
to play to herself. She hoped Bob Lindsay would 
not come as he had on two occasions when he 
heard the organ. She wondered why she liked 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 285 

Bob. He was obviously emotional, and putty in 
the hands of any woman who wanted him. She 
had never supposed him chaste or faithful, and yet 
she liked him. She did not condemn him for 
being an ordinary male. She knew it was be- 
cause he had no power to hurt her. 

What a horrible thing love was! What a 
weapon for agony it put into the hands of the 
people one loved. Was marriage a constant suc- 
cession of sword thrusts? If so she could not 
stand it. Better be lonely and unstabbed. She 
envied the bovine women who did not suspect 
their husbands. She hated her own imagination. 

Sidney loved the empty school at night. Its 
peace was intensified by the memory of the activ- 
ity of the day. In its curious isolation she could 
almost enjoy her breaking heart. 

She opened a book of Handel and began to 
play. She was absorbed in it when she heard the 
door open behind her. She was vexed with Bob 
for intruding. She turned to find herself looking 
up at Arthur Devereux. She stared helplessly at 
him as he stepped up to the organ. 

“Well, child,” he said, taking up one of the 
hymn books. He turned the pages rapidly, while 
she tried to stifle a smothering thumping of her 
heart. 

He set the open book down over her Handel. 

“Let’s sing ‘Lead, Kindly Light, Amid the 


286 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 


Eternal Gloom.’ It seems appropriate,” he sa. 
solemnly. 

She dropped her face, sternly setting her lips 
against a smile. 

“Oh, don’t laugh,” he said forbiddingly, look- 
ing down at her. “If you began to laugh, you 
might like me again. And then what would be- 
come of your principles ?” 

It was rather an unfortunate remark, as she had 
not yet recovered her sense of humour, and was 
feeling very touchy about her principles because 
they were in a precarious position. 

“You needn’t sneer at my principles,” she re- 
torted. “Men of your type are very particular 
about them when it comes to your wives, I’ve 
noticed.” 

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Sidney, what have you 
done with your sense of humour? Let’s go out 
and look for it.” 

Because she felt strongly the pressure of his 
personality, she deliberately set herself against it, 
determined that she would think her own way out 
of the mess she was in. And she was still full 
of the idea that he had deceived her for his own 
ends, and that his code of morality was not hers. 

“Arthur, you had no business to come here. 
I’m too tired to discuss anything to-night,” she 
said harshly. 

“I didn’t suggest a discussion. I suggested a 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 287 

search. Y ou’ve lost your most valuable posses- 
sion. But I suspect we may find it in a star.” 

He looked at her with such a comical expres- 
sion that she wanted to jump up and, like a child, 
throw herself into his arms. But she was a ruth- 
less young woman, inhumanly strong. And she 
had the idea that if she taught him a good lesson 
now he would remember it. This obnoxious idea 
was one of the results of her training and her 
dear aunt, who had always believed in improving 
the occasion, a method that seldom improves any- 
thing but the occasion. 

“I’m in no mood to talk to-night, Arthur. You 
think I’ve changed, but I have not. I still feel I 
cannot trust you. I’m sick about the whole thing. 
I do not consider myself engaged to you or bound 
to you in any way. Now will you please go? 
Somebody will come and find us here.” 

He knew quite well that her heart really belied 
every word she said. 

“Then they will,” he said calmly, drawing a 
second chair up to the organ. 

Flushing with quick anger because he took no 
notice of her, and really afraid that somebody 
might walk in at any minute, she rose and left 
him. 

He blew out the candles and followed her. 
At her gate his manner changed. 

“Just a moment, Sidney,” he began, in tones 


288 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

that startled her. “If you dismiss me like this, I 
swear I’ll never come to you again. I’ve every 
sympathy for your bruised mind. I remember 
what I felt like when I went through it. God 
knows I’m sorry enough if I’ve been the man to 
open your eyes. I should have preferred it to be 
someone else. But you will get over it, you know, 
and when you are forty you will laugh to think 
you ever went through such a phase. Now will 
you let me talk to you and help you if I can, or 
are you determined to be a fool? For nobody but 
a fool would wreck the prospects for happiness 
that you and I have. They may not be burning 
brightly at this moment, but they have cast pretty 
substantial shadows at times during the last year. 
Well, am I to go?” 

The hardness of his tone and manner startled 
and hurt her. And she was frightened by the al- 
ternative he offered. Two weeks ago she was 
sure she never wanted to see him again. Now 
the thought that she might not was unthinkable. 
Of course she had never really supposed he would 
go right out of her life. What had she supposed? 
She didn’t know. 

“All right, Arthur,” she said in a crushed voice, 
“I’ll hear you.” 

“The devil!” he retorted irritably, “if it’s as 
bad as all that I’ll go. Good God! I thought 
you loved me. I see I’ve been a fool too ” 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 289 

He stopped, for he saw that her shoulders had 
begun to shake. 

“Forgive me, Sidney. I didn’t sleep well last 
night, and my nerves are on edge. Come on, 
let’s talk this out. We can’t quarrel like this.” 

She turned with him towards the old wagon 
track leading into the gully behind the cottages. 
She took the cigarette he offered her. 

It was a clear, cool night, with an intensely 
black sky and brilliant stars. Sidney looked up 
at the Southern Cross, the great love of southern 
star gazers, and felt it was ridiculous of her to 
hang on to a mood and make a religion of gloom. 
But something had gone out of her relation to 
Arthur, never to return, and the fact that she had 
not yet adjusted herself to the absence of glamour 
made her feel that she had ceased to love him with 
her mind. It was too soon yet for her to see 
that the glamour was being replaced by some- 
thing more lasting than honeymoon hypnotism. 

“May I talk to you?” he asked presently. 

“Yes, but let me say something first.” 

She had regained her composure, and her voice 
was steady and detached. 

“This whole thing has been a shock to me, 
Arthur. I know it seems stupid to you. I sup- 
pose it mill seem funny to me when I am forty. 
I have been absurdly idealistic, and so this has 
hurt me, and I cannot get over it all at once. It’s 


2 9 o THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

done something to me, I don’t know what. And 
you seem almost a stranger to me, to my mind. 
It’s as if we would have to begin all over again. 
If you had only told me about Mana in the be- 
ginning — but it’s no use going over that now. 
And it was a shock to see the child — it has spoiled 
everything, all the memories — you may be hu- 
morous about it, but I can’t — it will take 
weeks ” 

She stopped, feeling that she could not go on 
without breaking. 

“I know, child. I suppose it serves me right. 
But you don’t hate me, do you?” 

He stopped on the track, took her face between 
his hands, and looked earnestly into it. He had 
been hurt in the school to see how drawn and 
sad it was. 

“No, I suppose I couldn’t really hate you, 
Arthur, whatever you did. But I never thought 
J — I ” she paused. 

“Yes, go on,” he said, seeing she found it dif- 
ficult to say what was in her mind. 

“Well, it used to be so wonderful to think of 
you, to see you coming ” her voice rasped. 

He swore beneath his breath. But he faced 
it squarely. He took her hand under his arm and 
walked on a few yards before speaking. 

“I know, my dear. It’s that wonderful glam- 
our about a person that we want to last for ever. 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 291 

But it never does last Most honeymoons see 
the end of it and the compromises begun. You 
and I could not have escaped that. And the 
trouble with you now is that you don’t see what 
is left, what will grow out of the ashes of the 
glamour — the wonderful plant of good company. 
Have you thought of that? The things that hold 
two people together so that nothing can ever dis- 
rupt their friendship are companionable habits. 
I think of you, and I remember that you have 
never made a banal remark about scenery, that 
you’ve never called a sunset ‘pretty’ or a view 
‘sweet,’ and I have no fear for the future. You 
are worrying now, you have been worrying about 
my possible infidelity. The thing that will keep 
me more than anything else from being unfaithful 
to you is that you never bore me, that you can be 
quiet, that you do not try to express the inex- 
pressible, that you do not call me your ‘pet’ and 
your ‘baby’ when I am kissing you, that we like 
the same things for breakfast ” 

Sidney laughed suddenly, surprising both her- 
self and him. 

“Good,” he exclaimed. “Patient past the cri- 
sis, but great care still necessary.” 

She looked at him. 

“Arthur, you know, you frighten me. You are 
such a clever talker, and you appear to have no 
feelings. There isn’t a thing you couldn’t joke 


292 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

about. It really scares me. I’ve a feeling that 
you could gloss over everything. Everything is 
funny to you. And I look ahead and see that it 
always will be. If you were unfaithful to me, 
you would try to make me think it funny.” 

“Well, wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing if I 
could?” 

“Oh, Arthur, please, don’t joke about 
that — * — ” 

“My dear girl, for God’s sake get infidelity out 
of your head. You women think far too much 
of it anyway. It is incidental. It is the least of 
marital tragedies, the least of reasons for divorce. 
What is it that drives most men into loving other 
women anyway? Think of the horrors of nerves, 
and irritation, and banal conversation that your 
sex imposes on ours without a thought of their 
soul racking effects! The Americans have the 
right idea in granting divorce for mental cruelty. 
If you’ll only start off by seeing me as I am, and 
then continue the habits you have led me to be- 
lieve you possess, I have no fear about my future 
infidelity. Of course, if you are determined I 
shall be unfaithful to you I may have to be to 
prove you right. Because, of course, it would 
never do for you to be wrong.” 

Sidney laughed again, a healthy laugh this time. 

“Good,” said Arthur again. “Patient now 
able to sit up and take nourishment.” 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 293 

She laughed on rather helplessly, and was 
afraid she was going to take hysterics. She 
pulled herself up with difficulty. 

Arthur dropped his foolery. 

44 You’re really awfully tired, child, I know that. 
That damned fire and everything. By the way, 
I haven’t heard the whole of that Mrs. James 
story yet. The house was burned, wasn’t it? 
Tell me how you got to that stump.” 

It seemed curious to her to talk to him about 
ordinary things again. The time when she had 
done so seemed so far away. She told him briefly 
how she had got Mrs. James across the creek. 
He fully appreciated the grimness of his being 
the person to go to her rescue. 

Then he gave her the full story of the fight at 
the Big Dam, omitting any reference to his part 
in it, and praising Jack and his men, and so talk- 
ing got back to her gate. 

He was wise enough to see that she needed a 
rest from him, that she would grow nearer to him 
in his absence. 

“Sidney, you are very tired. I’m not going to 
worry you. When you really want to see me 
again, will you let me know?” 

He held out his hand. He had meant to tell 
her that he now had his divorce, but he decided 
that he would not try to force her feelings in any 
way. 


294 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

If he had held out his arms, she would have 
fallen into them, for her body was not as obe- 
dient as it ought to have been to her mind. But 
he was afraid to hurry up her convalescence, for 
he knew they had had a narrow escape. He did 
not know her, for no man ever knows the intri- 
cate contradictions between a woman’s words and 
her emotional needs. 

“All right, good-night,” she said stupidly, for 
she was very tired. 

He gripped her hand, and in a moment was 
gone towards the stables. 

She lay awake cursing her pride and stupidity, 
and hungering for his arms and lips. 


CHAPTER XXVIII 


During the week Sidney received a note from 
Mana. 

“Dear Miss Carey, I have not seen you for a 
long time. Could you come up on Saturday?” 

At first she told herself she could not go. She 
wondered if Arthur had asked Mana to send the 
invitation; if he would be there. Then she saw 
he would never do that. She reviewed her feel- 
ings as to Mana. She did not hate her now, but 
she felt she could not see her yet. She wondered 
what they could say to each other. And then she 
began to be curious as to what Mana knew of the 
whole situation. She saw she could test Arthur’s 
statements by what she would say. She still had 
doubts. By Friday morning she meant to go. 

But Mrs. Jack Ridgefield became ill that day, 
and late in the afternoon the Whangarei doctor 
arrived. The baby, a boy, was not born till five 
o’clock on Saturday morning after an awful night. 
Jack Ridgefield spent it pacing the path between 
his house and Bob’s, cursing the ways of nature, 
205 


2 96 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

and vowing it never should happen again. Sid- 
ney sat in their kitchen all night waiting on the 
nurse and the doctor who stayed on till the mid- 
dle of the next day. 

Sophie was so low in the morning that the mill 
was closed so that she should not be startled into 
death by wlystles or the screeching of the circular 
saws. She was a little safer by night, better on 
the Sunday, surprisingly better on the Monday, 
and then got on splendidly. 

The happiness of this household meant a great 
deal to Sidney; indeed, she was astonished to see 
how much. She looked at Jack, seeing him with 
new eyes as a man struggling with inner demons, 
moved by his concern for his wife, and his first 
indifference to the queer little infant feebly squeak- 
ing its entrance into the world. As it was her 
first experience of childbirth, the pain, the dan- 
ger, the emotional upheaval were a considerable 
shock to her. And she saw it was all a consid- 
erable shock to Jack. 

He was touched beyond expression at the anx- 
iety of the village. The faithful Bob had sat up 
with him, tried to calm his ravings, had answered 
questions for him, and had spread the glad news 
when the danger was over. On Monday morn- 
ing the whole place felt nearer to its boss than it 
ever had before. And all day long parents 
greeted him with a glow of secret understanding. 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 297 

Jack thought with astonishment of the men who 
had been through all this before him, and of the 
women who had faced death as Sophie had, not 
once, but many times. 

Later on word went round the village that any- 
one who wished was invited to call upon the little 
Jack, and women who had never set foot in the 
Ridgefield home, and who never expected to, went 
to see Sophie, and were later visited by her. One 
touch of a first baby will do more for democracy 
than all the theories of all the economists. 

In the middle of the week Sidney sent a note 
to Mana telling her she would come the following 
Saturday if it were convenient. 

She had not heard a word of Arthur, and was 
beginning to be hurt. At least he might have 
written, she said to herself. She had forgotten 
that it was understood when they parted that she 
was to make the next move. She expected him 
to make it. 

As she rode up to the Joyous Valley she won- 
dered if she would hear of him from Mana. 
What were they to say to each other? They had 
not met for over two months. 

She paused, as she always did on the top of the 
ridge, to look down upon the little farm spar- 
kling in the clear winter sunlight. She knew that 
if she had brought hostility with her she would 
have had to leave it there upon the ridge. 


298 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

As she stepped onto the verandah Mana came 
out to meet her, her usual ease clouded by an air 
of uncertainty. 

“I am glad you came,” she said, looking doubt- 
fully at Sidney. “There is something I wanted 
to tell you.” 

Sidney was surprised that she could begin as 
easily as that. 

“I am glad to see you, Mana.” 

She could not have said it truthfully two weeks 
before. It was not the undiluted truth now, but 
it contained sufficient veracity to carry it. 

“I hope you are quite better.” 

She followed Mana into her front room. 

“Yes, thank you, Miss Carey. How is Mrs. 
Ridgefield?” 

Sidney sat down in the rocker by the window. 

“She’s getting on well now, but it was pretty 
serious for a while.” 

“Yes, an anxious time with a first baby,” said 
Mana softly. 

“Yes. I didn’t know it could be so harrow- 
ing,” answered Sidney. 

Then they looked at one another for a minute. 
Sidney saw that Mana’s courage was ebbing. 

“You wanted to tell me something?” she said, 
trying to make her voice encouraging. 

“Oh, Miss Carey, I — I wanted to tell you not 
to be jealous of me — about Mr. Devereux — it was 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 301 

“Please, Miss Carey, forget all about it, and 
forgive him.” 

“Forget and forgive!” she retorted. “Is it as 
easy as all that? Are you finding it easy?” 

Mana looked away. 

“It is never easy. But it can be done. And 
if you don’t forgive men you will only lose them. 
And it is hard to lose them.” 

Sidney set her teeth, and told herself she hated 
Arthur afresh for what he had done to Mana. 

“Men are not like us,” went on Mana, with the 
finality of fatalism. “And we have to take them 
as they are or go without.” 

Though Sidney had heard this profound re- 
mark a thousand times, it struck her as a piece of 
news coming from Mana, who infused into the 
words a sinister warning. 

“Go without,” was a menacing phrase. 

Sidney walked back to her chair, sat down and 
looked at her. 

“The thing I hate about men is the calm way 
they dance into our lives and dance out again. 
Now I can forgive Mr. Devereux for what he 
has done to me much more easily than I can for- 
give him for what he has done to you. If I had 
only known in the beginning ” 

“Why, Miss Carey, he hasn’t done anything 
to me. He has been fine to me. Please don’t 
think about me. I knew it was — that it was just 


j 02 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

for a while — I never expected it to last. And 
it was my fault ” 

“I don’t believe that,” cried Sidney sharply. 
“Has he been telling you what to say to me?” 

She leaned forward, scanning Mana’s face. 

“Oh, no. Certainly not.” 

“What did he tell you?” she asked curiously. 

“He just said you knew, Miss Carey, that we 
had lived together, and he asked me about the 
baby and the pajamas.” 

“Did he ever tell you we were engaged?” 

“Oh, yes, a long while ago.” 

“When?” 

“Last year, in the spring.” 

“You are sure?” 

“Yes, I am quite sure. And we stopped living 
together.” 

Sidney knew she was speaking the truth. 

“So you can forgive him,” repeated* Mana 
softly. 

Sidney saw why men would always want to 
live with women like Mana, soft comfortable 
women who would give much for little, forgive 
charmingly, forget easily, and begin again hope- 
fully. She knew she would never know the whole 
story, never get at what it had meant to Mana. 

In a flash of illumination she saw also that it 
must have been very hard for Arthur to break 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 303 

with her. Indeed, she now forgot herself and 
began to think about their end of it. 

“Oh, Mana,” she cried impulsively, “I have 
thought of nobody but myself. And gosh ! what 
an idiot I have been.” 

She dropped her head into her hands, the 
thought of her ridiculous mistakes overwhelming 
her. But for them they would all have gone on 
peacefully, and she need never have known. And 
she saw now that she did not have to know, and 
that she wanted Arthur anyway, and would have 
had him whatever he had done. 

Now she dreaded to think of the weapon for 
retaliation that she had put into his hands. 

Thinking of it, she groaned. 

“Oh, do forget it all, Miss Carey,” said Mana, 
in distress. “It never does any good to think 
about unpleasant things.” 

Sidney raised her face with a harsh little laugh. 

“I wish I could be like you. But I can’t. How- 
ever, I’m going to try to forget it. I’m glad you 
sent for me. It would have been awful if you 
hadn’t. And I can never tell you how much I 
appreciate you — what you have been ” 

With a mist over her eyes she held out her 
hand. 

Mana brightened at once. 

“Let me show you my baby,” she said. “You 
haven’t seen it.” 


304 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

It lay in the fatal pram in the back yard, a per- 
fectly authentic Maori cherub, properly fathered 
by Mana’s husband. It was the cunningest little 
soft thing, opening its bright brown eyes at 
Sidney. 

“You see it is all right,” said Mana, “though 
I wouldn’t have minded if it had been his. But 
it was a funny mistake.” She dared now to 
smile. “And the pajamas, I will send them 
back ” 

“Oh, damn those pajamas!” groaned Sidney. 
“They will haunt me all my life. I’ll never be 
able to endure the sight of blue pajam»as again. 
For heaven’s sake keep them if you want to, 
Mana. And let’s forget the whole darned mess. 
I am so sick of it.” 

As she rode home she wondered how she was 
ever to face Arthur again. 

For days she put off writing to him and then 
was surprised to get in her mail an envelope in his 
writing addressed from Auckland. She did not 
know he was away. 

Inside she found a card on which, against a 
black background, were painted a pair of blue 
pajamas hanging on a line, and an aggressively 
white baby sitting in a pram, while a mocking 
red devil grinned at them from the right hand 
corner. The thing was well painted and drawn, 
and was obviously done by an artist. 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 305 

Below the objects were printed the words “In- 
tuitions. Beware ! They are not what they 
seem.” 

There was no other word. 

But Sidney kissed the absurd thing, and laughed 
and cried over it, and surrendered. 

By the return mail she sent to Arthur’s Auck- 
land address a post card sayings simply, “Recov- 
ered: a sense of humour.” 

The next week was her winter vacation, and 
she wondered if he would be in Auckland, and 
whether she would see him, as they now had there 
mutual friends. 


CHAPTER XXIX 


Sidney went to stay with a family who had en- 
tertained her and Arthur the previous summer. 

After she had unpacked, her hostess told her 
they would have to leave her alone that evening 
for an imperative business dinner engagement that 
would have bored her to death. They thought 
she would prefer to rest. She was glad of their 
thoughtfulness, and said she would go to bed 
early. 

When she walked into their drawing-room be- 
fore dinner a fong rose out of a chair, and a voice 
said, “I hope the sense of humour is healthy this 
evening.” 

“Oh, Arthur,” she gasped helplessly. 

But before they could make a proper beginning 
dinner was announced. The woman servant who 
waited on them thought them a very hilarious 
couple. But she was puzzled by some of their 
conversation. She wondered why a white baby 
should be the subject of amusement. She under- 
stood better the humorous possibilities of blue 
pajamas. 

At the end of the meal, when they were alone, 
306 


THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 307 

Arthur went to the sideboard, took up a bottle 
and a corkscrew, and turning to the table showed 
them to Sidney. 

“Do you recognize it?” he asked, holding up 
the Burgundy. 

“Why, Arthur! The same bottle?” 

“The same. You won’t refuse to drink with 
me now?” 

She flushed. 

“I always hated myself for that,” she said look- 
ing down. 

“You were afraid of me there, in my shanty,” 
he smiled. 

“And of myself,” she said. 

“You didn’t get my mood. I was full of a 
great resolve. I wanted to drink to it.” 

She looked up into his face, half guessing. 

“That was the night I made up my mind I had 
to be faithful to you.” 

Leaning forward, she seized his hand and 
kissed it. 

“And even without the Burgundy I was,” he 
added. 

She put his hand against her cheek. 

“But it will do no harm to resolve again with 
the Burgundy,” he went on. 

Then with an air of solemn ceremoniousness 
he drew the cork and poured out the wine. 


3 o8 THE PASSIONATE PURITAN 

Sidney stood up beside him, and they raised 
their glasses. 

“To monogamy,” he said gravely, “and may it 
be as interesting as it ought to be. The good 
Lord help us both.” 

She choked and had to put down her glass. 

When she recovered she proposed a toast of 
her own. 

“To the great god Humour, and may he never 
desert us.” 

And they finished the bottle in great spirits. 

Soon afterwards, in the drawing-room, the 
pearl and diamond ring was on Sidney’s hand. 
She had seen the divorce papers, and had con- 
sented to as immediate a marriage as the Board 
of Education would allow, on the condition, 
fiercely emphasized, that certain objects should 
never thereafter be mentioned between them. 


THE END 



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